Tunnelling the English Channel

director: Georges Méliès

original title: Le tunnel sous la Manche ou le cauchemar franco-anglais

country: France

year: 1907

running time: 15 min.

synopsis

Another curious approach to documenting reality is Méliès' development of hypotheses about the possible causes of certain events. In this image, French President Armand Fallières and King Edward VII of England meet on a train. At night, the two have a fanciful dream about the construction of an undersea tunnel under the English Channel. As the two trains collide, the two politicians awaken and swear that no construction will ever take place. Let us not forget that at that time there were already over a hundred underwater tunnel projects. One of them is the underwater locomotive introduced in 1869 or the “tube bridge” proposed in 1875. In addition to the comic plot, the film is also notable for the fact that surviving copies contain intertitles, which actually began to appear in Méliès's work in the 1900s.

biography

Georges Méliès (1861-1938) is one of the first independent film directors whose work crystalised the early film genres. He worked on fantasy scenes, adaptations of literary works, fairy tales, as well as socio-critical and political films. His documentary filmmaking is less well known, as a lot of it has not been preserved.

more about film

director:

Georges Méliès

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