La conquête du pôle (1912)

Director:

Georges Méliès

Writer:

Jules Verne (novel)

Genre:

Short | Adventure | Sci-Fi

Plot:

Scientists from all over the world are meeting to discuss the best way to reach the North Pole. Professor...

Plot Keywords:

North Pole | Arctic | Based On Novel

Cast

Georges Méliès	...	Engineer Mabouloff
Fernande Albany

Also Known As:

Conquest of the Pole
The Conquest of the Pole (International: English title)

Runtime:

France:30 min (Flicker Alley print)

Country:

France

Language:

French

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Silent

Filming Locations:

Montreuil, Seine-Saint-Denis, France

Company:

Georges Méliès

Movie Connections:

Featured in Historia del cine: Epoca muda (1983) (V)

End of an Era

Georges Méliès had already travelled to the moon, the Sun, to the undersea kingdom of the fairies, and tunnelled through the English Channel, among various other adventures. This time, he goes to the North Pole--a journey already accomplished in reality, but not the way Méliès saw it. For his trip, he employs a plane with helicopter lift, has encounters with personified celestial bodies (which was common in his fantasy films) and fights off a pipe-smoking giant inhabiting the pole. There's even a contemporary offhand rib at the women's suffrage movement (as John Frazer points out in his book "Artificially Arranged Scenes," and for which I probably wouldn't have gathered otherwise from the two versions I've seen), including the rather outrageously suggestive impaling of one woman.

'The Conquest of the Pole' follows the same formulaic narrative structure that Méliès had begun with 'Le Voyage dans la lune' (1902). They begin with a meeting where Méliès' character introduces the adventure. This is followed by a scene at a factory where the journey's vehicle is manufactured – scenes of launching and travelling – a fight with an enemy encountered at the destination - and, finally, the successful return home. Moreover, 'The Conquest of the Pole' was inspired by a Jules Verne story, as were 'Le Voyage dans la lune' and 'An Impossible Voyage' (1904). Additionally, it's derived in part from Robert W. Paul's lost film, 'Voyage of the Arctic, or How Capitain Kettle Discovered the North Pole' (1903), which apparently also included a giant inhabiting the pole.

'The Conquest of the Pole' was, if not the last, one of the filmmaker's last fantastical adventure films. In a way, this film represents the end of an era in film history. Méliès had already been becoming increasingly irrelevant as far as the advancement of film technique and cinematic storytelling, and not long after this film, he would be done with the industry--pushed out mainly by competition (or, rather, the monopolization of the competition) from more financially savvy companies such as Pathé, which distributed this film, and the other studios of the Motion Picture Patents Company. Some of the narrative changes that had occurred during and since Méliès' heyday (from about 1899 to 1905) even creep into this film, including some scene dissection, the use of intertitles, and the general loss of some of the shot-scene, theatrical style that dominated Méliès' earlier films. By 1912, films had changed: filmmakers like D.W. Griffith were regularly using such techniques as crosscutting and scene dissection between varied camera positions and perspectives. Feature-length films were becoming increasingly more popular and would soon become the dominant form--transcending the one and two reel structures that Méliès' had helped make industry standards. The art and industry that Méliès had helped build had by now outgrew him.