Overrated

One of my all time favorites.

best movie i've ever seen.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Anybody who's seen Melies' "A Trip to the Moon" should certainly watch this. It not only surpasses the run time of the earlier film, (resulting in a 20 minute production which was amazing for its time), it is visually astounding and fantastic. Even though Melies had already indulged in multi-scene spectacles by this time, this was without a doubt the "Intolerance" of its day. Visual effects, nice color, beautiful sets...wow.Many people have been calling this a sequel to "A Trip to the Moon" and I can see why they're saying that, because it is yet again a sci-fi topic. Instead of the moon, however, the scientists here go to the sun. There's tons of build-up too. First, they have to build the means of transportation (a train). Then, they go on this huge journey through the Swiss landscape. Then, their car gets busted and they have to spend days in the hospital. Obviously, Melies was more or less padding it out with all this build-up, but with all the action and detail put into each scene, there is plenty to see.Melies obviously had an imagination. Not only had anybody ever gone to the moon by 1902, ANY sort of space travel was unheard of. Thus, even now we realize how utterly impossible it is to go to the sun (through the mouth, no less). But Melies was all about creating the impossible. This movie is such a visual treat that even people today could be entertained.Also, it can be noted a supplemental section to this was made, where Crazyloff manages to recover the equipment lost in the sun by using a gigantic magnet to pull it all back to earth. It is unknown whether this section has survived, as John Frazer claims to have once inspected a print, while Malthete lists the short as lost.

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.

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.

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.