UnowPriceless hyped garbage

Humaira Grant It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

Marva It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

Raymond Sierra The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

Horst in Translation (filmreviews@web.de) 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.

Michael_Elliott 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.

ackstasis 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.

Snow Leopard 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.