In this loose adaptation of American writer Washington Irving's "Rip Van Winkle" original story and French composer Robert Planquette's famous 1882 operetta, the indefatigable director, Georges Méliès, unfolds an enchanting woodland fantasy in seventeen vibrant scenes. Incorporating strong elements of ingenious stage tricks and theatrics, mechanical devices, cinematic special effects, and gradual dissolves between tableaux to move from stark reality to rich phantasmagoria, the unsuspecting Rip's ordeal begins shortly after his escape to the mountains to flee the local authorities' wrath. However, in the seemingly safe woods, a captivatingly eerie and haunting dream sequence will condemn our hero in a profound and almost mystical twenty-year slumber. Will the world be the same after two decades of deep sleep?