La Conquete du pole

[Dave Monroe]

... and just when I don't have a copy of Jules Verne's
Journey to the Center of the Earth on me does it come
up.  I do, however, have this nifty postcard of a
poster for Georges Melies' 1912 film, A la Conquete du
pole (sorry, missing a couple of those nifty little
diacritical marks the French seem to roof their vowels
with the way Germans do with umlauts), all balloons,
dirigibles, aeroplanes and ornithopters catching the
rising (or is it setting?) sun o'er a besealed,
bepenguined, and, I THINK, berhinocerosed (could be a
polar bear, but ...) icecap.  I think all the green is
just shadow, but ...

But not much info @ the Internet Movie Data Base ...

http://us.imdb.com/Title?0002113

.. except that the film is based on another Jules
Verne novel, Voyages et aventures du Captaine
Hatteras, trans. into English variously as The
Adventures of Captain Hatteras or The English at the
North Pole (which involves a mysterious order to sail
for one Melville Bay).  As has already been mentioned,
JV wrote an afterword and/or sequel to E.A. Poe's The
Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket with the
very suggestive here indded title The Sphinx of the
Ice-Fields as well.  Anybody familiar with any of
these?  Will look into it myself, but ...



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