Review of À la conquête du pôle

Explorers in a variety of fantastic vehicles race to the North Pole where the winners encounter the pipe-smoking Giant of the Snows. Despite some imaginative imagery and a topical subject (both Poles having been reached for the first time within three years of the film's release), Méliès ambitious techno-fantasy (one of his last) is neither particularly interesting nor entertaining. The story is very similar to the auteur's 'biggest hit', the seminal sci-fi film 'A Trip to the Moon' (1902) but despite some 'updating' (e.g. The suffragette movement is lampooned), by 1912 audiences seemed to be tiring of Méliès' fanciful theatrical style. From my perspective a century hence, the film is historically interesting but otherwise stagy, slow-moving and repetitive. The climactic battle with the giant is an impressive display of puppeteering but the various driving and flying contraptions (and their fates) are mostly silly (considering that by 1912 automobiles and aircraft were becoming relatively common place (the Paris Air Show began in 1909 and the international French Grand Prix was first run in 1906)). The film, which was a failure commercially, marked the beginning of Méliès decline as a filmmaker - of his over 500 films, only three were made after "Conquest of the Pole' and by 1914 the pioneering French auteur was bankrupt.