Today's special post is part of the Movie Scientist Blogathon hosted by Christina Wehner
and Silent Screenings
. Click on the link to visit many fantastic blogs celebrating the Good, the Mad, and the Lonely in cinematic science!
The world has not been in an uproar like this since Phileas Fogg took his abbreviated trip around the globe! The redoubtable Professor Maboul has created a frenzy with his plan to visit the North Pole in one of Georges Méliès final films.
As a result of the American movie factory and new innovations in filmmaking by directors from Hollywood and the German schools, Méliès began winding down production in the early 1910's, just as his art was to reach its peak. Méliès took the staged, tableau style - where entire scenes unfold in static set pieces before the viewer sitting back in the objective view of a live theatre patron - about as far is it could go artistically. This easily shows in the ambitious
A la Conquête du Pôle (English:
Conquest of the Pole), one of only three films Méliès produced in 1912.
Like Méliès' last major Scientific Romance, Le Voyage à travers l'Impossible (English: The Impossible Voyage), the scope and scale of Conquest of the Pole is tremendous. However, unlike that 1904 film, the pace is quickened up. Conquest of the Pole runs for approximately the same duration, but moves along much more rapidly, recalling mastery and magic of his greatest film from a decade prior, Le Voyage dans la Lune (English: A Trip to the Moon).
