The Impossible Voyage (1904)

It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

This is a crazy, delightful mess. Explorers make an effort to go to lands never seen and report back. They try to use every conceivable vehicle to go over mountains, under seas, through outer space, actually visiting the sun (I wonder if they went at night so they wouldn't get burned). There are laughs galore because the stuffed shirt explorers were in no way equipped to do any kind of huge investigation. No matter what horrible things happen to them, getting frozen, blown up, crashing from a hundred miles away, going through the sun, and on and on, they always make their way out. One of the stars of this film is the painted scenery. Melies really liked the jagged edges of the mountains and wacky surreal realms of the outer world.

I recently saw the director's "Le voyage dans la lune" and while I didn't totally love it, it made a good viewing experience and I believe everybody who calls himself a cinephile should have seen it at least once. Now, two years later, the French cinema pioneer made another film considerably longer than most of his other work just like his moon travel story.Unfortunately, "Le voyage à travers l'impossible" did not leave me impressed. All in all, it felt like a recycled Trip to the Moon with an exchanged target location. There's nothing wrong with picking the sun as the explorers' destination this time. Sure it's impossible, but it's sci-fi and thus perfectly justified. But it's all been there and even done better (down to the sun's face) by the director himself. Honestly, I felt the first six minutes were downright boring. The actions and character movements looked exactly the same like in his previous project. The the action switches to the Alps, which is probably my favorite sequence. The scenes in the snow were interesting to watch, the hospital was nicely done and picking the mountains as a ramp to fly up to the sun was one of the few innovative ideas and executions in this short. The actual sun sequences were pretty forgettable again and so was the cheerful reception of the the explorers which was pretty much interchangeable with the one from two years earlier again.If you enjoyed "Le voyage dans la lune", I still think this one can be worth the watch if you don't mind this being mostly a weaker copy. But if you need to pick between the two, the Moon should always be your preferred destination.

Having produced a blockbuster in 1903 in which a group of scientists journeyed to the moon, Melies tried to outdo himself the following year by having another group of manic scientists travel to the sun. He made this film longer and stencilled it in colour, and the outcome is quite astounding. To think that Melies was producing lengthy masterpieces like this while contemporary filmmakers were still experimenting with one-shot narratives goes to show how far ahead of his time Melies really was - which makes his downfall less than a decade later all the sadder. Melies fills the screen with colour with sets sometimes similar to the expressionist sets of the German masterpieces of the late teens and 20s, and fills it also with movement. Not one moment passes when there isn't something to look at. Although this film is not as widely known as Le Voyage dans la lune for my money it surpasses it in terms of exuberance and imagination.

Released in 1904, cinematic magician Georges Méliès' 'Le Voyage à travers l'impossible / The Impossible Voyage' often stands in the shadow of the filmmaker's earlier success 'Le Voyage dans la lune / A Trip to the Moon (1902),' which has long-since earned itself the label of a cinematic classic. In many ways, however, 'Le Voyage à travers l'impossible' is a superior film, brimming with stunning set and model-work, creative visual effects, an exciting around-the-world journey and no shortage of imagination!At 24 minutes in length (which was almost unheard of at the time), 'Le Voyage à travers l'impossible' was no doubt heavily inspired by its more famous predecessor, as well as Jules Verne and Adolphe d'Ennery's play of the same name. The version of the film most commonly viewed nowadays (featured on the "Landmarks of Early Film – Volume 2" DVD) features a hand-coloured print, supplemented with narration penned by Méliès himself.Like most of Méliès' films, the narrative is played out like a stage play, with the story usually divided into various distinct one-take scenes, the camera settled at a distance from the action. The first few minutes of the film are concerned with organising this "impossible voyage," which will entail the use of every known means of locomotion – including trains, automobiles, dirigible balloons, submarines and boats. An engineer (played, I believe, by the director himself) explains his extraordinary plans to the members of a geographic society, who meet his proposal with wholehearted enthusiasm. The voyage itself is an unparalleled triumph of early visual effects. The members of the expedition are first whisked away in a fast-moving train, which is particularly significant in that, at the time, the train was seen as an invention that could take you anywhere. 'Le Voyage à travers l'impossible' takes this idea to the literal extreme, symbolic of the ever-expanding possibilities of the era.That iconic image of the scientists' rocket piercing the eye of the Man on the Moon has permanently become engrained in the minds of film-goers. In this film, we meet the Sun, who unexpectedly comes face-to-face with a flying locomotive. The gradual emergence of the Sun from behind the shifting clouds is a genuinely beautiful sight, and the face which comprises it is infinitely more pleasant than the nasty, ugly brute from a later Méliès film, 'L' Éclipse du soleil en pleine lune / The Eclipse: Courtship of the Sun and Moon (1907).' Letting out a wide yawn to welcome in the new day, the Sun is understandably startled when the expedition's soaring train enters its outstretched mouth, and he proceeds to cough trails of flame.On the surface of the Sun, the engineer and his band of fellow travellers set out to explore this strange new landscape, before the rising of the Sun precipitates a drastic rise in temperature (sounds unusual, but you'll have to suspend belief with this dubious logic). As all the explorers clamber into a specially-made icebox to cool down, all but the engineer are frozen into a block of solid ice. Rescued from a frosty fate by the leader of the expedition (who shrewdly decides to light a fire), the team tumbles into their only remaining means of travel – a submarine – and launch themselves off the face of the Sun and into the depths of the ocean.Some viewers may find it difficult to accept this film's questionable take on science and logic, but this all adds to the charm of it. Méliès – a master of magician's tricks, puffs of smoke and impossible disappearances – was never concerned with reality, but with transporting his audiences into a world quite unlike their own. In an era where so many directors were neither daring nor imaginative enough to make the impossible happen on screen, 'Le Voyage à travers l'impossible' is the pinnacle of early film-making.