A New Way of Traveling (1908) User Reviews

Neat to watch...but pretty incomprehensible.

[planktonrules · 5/10 · 2 May 2021]

"Voyage Oriental" is a film clearly inspired by Georges Méliès' "A Trip to the Moon"...a film often copied. In fact, director Segundo de Chomón did copy the film, though "Voyage Oriental" isn't so much a copy as a film that has some similarities.

The story is simple. Two horribly stereotypical Asian men stuff a rotund woman into a barrel and then they hang on to it as it's hurled through space. It lands on some weird planet or the moon and everything looks like it was inspired by the sea...and they see a lot of men and women wearing sea-inspired costumes. They return to Earth the same way and land in the water...nearly drowning the woman in the process.

This is an okay film but clearly the story seemed secondary and it really didn't make a lot of sense compared to other space films of the era. It just seemed rushed and confusing...and the 'Asians' pretty ridiculous looking at that. Worth seeing but far from Segundo's best work...even with the nicely hand colored film stock.

Under the Sea

[boblipton · 5/10 · 23 September 2013]

Over the past decade, enough of Segundo de Chomon's movies have crept out from the archives to show him as a skilled competitor to Georges Melies as a creator of fantasy films. Although this one is nothing special in that line, it certainly is a competent combination of stage and screen magic as motion is shown via cyclorama and then a fantastic view of life under the oceans is revealed via masking techniques, as people in fantastic costumes apparently scroll down the middle of the screen.

Although the careful modern viewer will recognize these tricks and the way they are executed, the elaborate nature of the set dressings and the costumes make them a film maker worthy of fighting Melies for his market. De Chomon would outlast Melies, backed by Pathe Frere's budgets and access to markets, but mostly as a maker of travelogues.