A TRIP TO MARS (Holger-Madsen, Denmark, 1918, 5)
Scandinavian utopian community with lots of flowers … what could go wrong?
A TRIP TO MARS is only a little more cinematically sophisticated than Melies’ similarly titled canon film from a decade and a half earlier, though the overheard aerial shots are impressive for the era. There’s just far too many title cards regurgitating dialogue (I wish this film could’ve loanded out a few to SYLVESTER.)
Narratively, it has about as much to do with space travel as ELECTRA-WOMAN AND DYNAGIRL with policing (I was genuinely asking myself, “how much WAS known about the physics of space travel in 1918?”). But such sillinesses as the spaceship being basically a blimp built from wood in a workshop actually work for the film given how equally...