Cinema Muto

Voyage Autour D’Une Etoile

19 Voyage Autour D’Une Etoile “An old astronomer has long adored a star. He has only one desire—to approach it and declare his passion. But how shall he achieve this? Watching children playing with soap bubbles gives him an idea.” —Le Giornate del Cinema Muto catalogue An old astronomer floats into the sky inside a giant bubble. Should we take this as a sign of man’s desire to draw nearer to the heavens, of his desire to come closer, God, to you? Or is this merely base desire? The stars busty, long-haired beauties in a harem; the moon the jealous sultan of the sky who tosses the old astronomer from the palace of the heavens. Pathé filmed this Voyage twice, in 1906 & again in 1907— a common practice in those days 20 when the negative wore out from making prints. In the first, the astronomer, falling to earth, is impaled on a lightning rod. A death not unlike the sad pagan end of Icarus. In the remake, the astronomer falls with a harmless splash into his washtub full of bubbles. I confess, coming clean as an end seems a better thing to hope for. I bathe every morning, God— can I consider myself cleansed? ...