The film:

The cosmic adventures of Professor Nigadimus are perhaps the most famous Italian fantasy film of the early years, even if, when he made it, the director Gaston Velle had only just transferred from the Pathé studios in Paris to Cines in Rome. The newly established production house, in fact, wished to form its own technical team with the help of transalpine experts, attracted by economically generous contracts. Velle brought with him, apart from his great experience, drafts and designs of the films he had made for the French company, which he proposed without too many scruples as remakes, within the limits of plagiarism. Viaggio in una stella is thus the “twin” of the French Voyage autour d’une étoile, in which, however, the gallant professor pays more dearly for his own enterprise, ending up impaled on a lightning rod. The ending of this print of the Italian version is unfortunately missing, but publicity of the period reassures us that the professor landed back on earth without too much damage in the washtub in which he had left.

The film restoration:

Viaggio in una stella has been restored by Museo Nazionale del Cinema di Torino from a nitrate positive (140 meter-long) without intertitles, preserved at the Museo. In order to fill some missing frames and to restore colors a toned nitrate positive preserved at Fondazione Cineteca di Bologna and a positive 16 mm preserved at Cineteca del Friuli in Gemona were used. A special acknowledgment to Cinémathèque Royale de Belgique for collaborating in research. 

The restoration works were carried out in 2012 by the laboratory L’Immagine Ritrovata in Bologna.

Link Vimeo Cineteca MNC:

https://vimeo.com/788579029

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