The Impossible Voyage
| The Impossible Voyage | |
|---|---|
| File:The Impossible Voyage .png | |
| Directed by | Georges Méliès |
| Written by | Georges Méliès Jules Verne Victor de Cottens |
| Starring | Georges Méliès |
| Distributed by | Georges Méliès Kleine Optical Company S. Lubin |
Release date | October 29, 1904 |
Running time | 24 minutes |
| Country |  France |
| Language | silent |
The Impossible Voyage (Voyage à travers l'impossible) is a 1904 silent film (produced by Star Film, France) by pioneer filmmaker Georges Méliès. The film's runtime is about 24 minutes (about five times the length of the average film at that time), and was probably inspired by Melies' successful earlier film Le Voyage dans la Lune (A Trip to the Moon). It is loosely based on Jules Verne's play Voyage à travers l'impossible. Like most of Méliès' films at this time, it made use of narrative, models, and trick photography.
Synopsis
A geographic society proposes to travel around the world. Many vehicles are made for this voyage, including a submarine, an automobile, and a large railway box car filled with ice. The machines are loaded onto a train, and are sent to the Swiss Alps, where the travelers will begin their journey. They first board an automobile named "The Impossible Carriage" and journey through the mountains, only to crash and to be rushed to a hospital. After they have recovered, they board a train with their vehicles, and journey up a mountain top. Getting higher and higher every minute, with balloons attached to the train, they rise into space and are "swallowed" by the sun. The travelers land with a crash. They are happy to be alive, but the heat is too much. All but one of the travelers are loaded into an ice box, but are suddenly frozen. The remaining traveler starts a fire to melt the ice, and moves the individuals over to a submarine. The submarine is launched off the sun, and falls into an ocean. A boiler problem causes the submarine to explode, and the travelers are thrown up into the air, and fall onto land. A grand rejoicing is held for the individuals.
Meaning
Prior to this film, most films were short and all revolved around stimulating the visual sense, a feature of the modern movement. Gradually, film became a medium used to tell a story. Melies’ The Impossible Voyage (1904) is a particular example of this. It tells the story of, passengers boarding a train which takes them on an adventure to the sun and even under the ocean. Lasting around twenty minutes (far longer than other films of this time), the visual sense is stimulated as with no spoken soundtrack the viewer has to concentrate that particular sense on the film in order to follow the narrative that is unfolding. The train is particularly significant; the train was seen as an invention which could literally take you anywhere at this time, and the fact that this film uses the train in order to show the adventure is symbolic of the expanding possibilities of the time.