An Impossible Voyage

really a great hand colored early science fiction movie with full of early special effects,greatest moment in the film that they reach the sun and go into the suns mouth with a train,this scene is very familiar with the trip to the moon when they reach the moon. The tour through the swiss landscape is also a great moment.

Impossible Voyage, The (1904)

*** (out of 4)

Melies attempt to pass his landmark A TRIP TO THE MOON doesn't quite come close to that but this here is still an entertaining little film. Running 20-minutes, this tells the story of a Geographic Society who build a special ship that will take them through the sky, to the sun and then under the sea. That's pretty much the only type of plot we get here as the master Frenchman really makes for an inter sting film that has more going on for it visually than anything story wise. I must admit that I found what little story we have here to be quite boring as none of the human characters are all that interesting (not too uncommon for 1904) but the places they visit really aren't that interesting either. The look of all the locations is what makes this film worth seeing as there's no doubt Melies put a lot of imagination into everything we're seeing. I really loved the hand-colored stuff as this too had imagination behind it and it wasn't just a scribbled mess. The underwater sequence is a good one but the highlight would have to be when the ship goes into the mouth of the sun.

What an interesting and unusual little feature this is - the combination of Méliès and Jules Verne always produces something worth seeing, and this one is based on one of Verne's most fantastical ideas. It follows a group of scientists and scholars on a very fanciful trip that uses every imaginable form of conveyance, and the story gives Méliès all kinds of opportunities for his trademark visual effects.

Each scene is packed with details, so much so that you cannot even catch it all in one viewing. It is also color-tinted in many places, which adds even more to the effect. The story is just wild, and is less plausible than many Verne stories, but that does not detract from it as entertainment. Méliès even tosses in a little slapstick, which is not too bad for its time. It is similar to, and just a cut below, his film of Verne's "Trip to the Moon", and anyone who enjoyed that classic should also like this one.

Director Georges Méliès was an absolutely brilliant early filmmaker and innovator. His camera tricks, use of a complex plot and sets, and fun-loving fantasy elements in his films made him the greatest film maker of his day. While I recently read that THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY (from Edison Inc.) was the "first full-length film", this simply isn't true, as Méliès' LE VOYAGE DANS LE LUNE (1902) preceded it and was a much more complex film--featuring amazing sets and lots of laughs as a group of scientists take a trip to the moon and meet the evil moon men! Only a year later, in an attempt to outdo his previous success, Méliès made this film about another group of wacky scientists who take a trip to the Sun as well as under the sea!! And, while the original film was a very long 14 minutes (that WAS full-length in its day), this one is 20--making it probably the longest film of its day.

While the new film is obviously strongly derived from the previous Méliès epic, compared to all other films of the day it is still brilliant and not even close to being matched. BUT, my score of 9 is more a way to indicate that it isn't quite as good as his film about the Moon. But, it is still very, very watchable and cute even today (something that can't be said of most other films of the age).

If you want to see this film online, go to Google and type in "Méliès" and then click the video button for a long list of his films that are viewable without special software.

I suppose you could consider this film as a spiritual follow up to A Trip to the Moon. The latter remains George Méliès most famous and iconic film; probably for good reason considering its ambition and imagination. An Impossible Voyage explores similar territory and is certainly a worthy companion-piece as an example of early cinematic science fiction.

In this one a group of scientists don't go to the moon, they head further afield to the sun. Perhaps this illustrates Méliès reaching out further too. Certainly this is another example of him developing the idea of what cinema could be. Unlike most of his peers, he was taking the medium into the story-telling sphere. Films like this were in this sense the beginnings of modern cinema as we know it.

The film features a nice colour tint that adds a great deal to the fantastical look. It contains a number of hand painted sets that gives it all a highly stylised look. The scientists' adventure not only takes them to the sun but also across the mountains of Switzerland, which Méliès also depicts like an alien landscape. The travellers end up in the bottom of the ocean completing their amazing journey. All in all this is an entertaining and highly imaginative work, well worth catching.