Tunneling the English Channel
About Tunneling the English Channel
King Edward VII and French president Armand Fallières dream of a tunnel under the English Channel. An engineer, played by Georges Méliès, lays out the plans. On the cliffs at Calais and at Dover the two leaders, shown huge, bow and reach to shake hands. Their hands do not meet across the water. Work crews celebrate as the digging nears the end. A first train moves slowly through the finished tunnel from the French side toward England. The French title calls the dream a Franco-English nightmare.
Cast & crew
More about Tunneling the English Channel
Méliès wrote, directed, and produced the trick film. Star Film numbered it 936–950 and advertised it as a fantaisie burlesque à grand spectacle in 30 tableaux. It was released on 1 July 1907. Fernande Albany plays the leader of a Salvation Army parade. King Edward was played by a wash-house attendant who looked like the king, the same man who had played him in The Coronation of Edward VII (1902). Effects include stage machinery, pyrotechnics, substitution splices, superimpositions, and dissolves.
Themes
Background
In 1907 the Channel tunnel was being argued again in London and Paris. The film treats the project as a shared dream that the title already calls a nightmare.
Making
Méliès used an underground miniature and moving scenery for the dig. The handshake that cannot cross the Channel is played with the two leaders enlarged on the cliffs.
Look
The camera records stage machinery, dissolves, and superimpositions, including the oversized king and president on the two cliffs.
Music
Silent. Méliès prepared a spoken boniment. Bétove recorded a piano score in 1946.
Preservation
A print survives. One circulating copy runs 14 minutes 29 seconds.
Notes
- A Channel tunnel was a live political argument in 1907. Méliès built the short on that argument.
- André Méliès recalled a boniment, a spoken commentary, with the king speaking French in a thick English accent.
- Bétove, Michel Maurice Lévy, recorded a piano score for the film in 1946.
- A circulating copy runs 14 minutes 29 seconds.
- Jehanne d'Alcy is listed on some cast sheets. The Wikipedia credits do not give her a part.
- Albany had already appeared in The Impossible Voyage and An Adventurous Automobile Trip.
Scenes
- The king and the president, huge on the cliffs of Dover and Calais, reach for a handshake and miss.
- A train starts through the finished tunnel from the French side.
