Sun 29 May 2016
A Movie Review by Jonathan Lewis: 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA (1954).
Posted by Steve under Reviews , SF & Fantasy films[11] Comments
20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA. Walt Disney / Buena Vista, 1954. Kirk Douglas, James Mason, Paul Lukas, Peter Lorre. Based on the novel by Jules Verne. Director: Richard Fleischer.
Although this 1954 Walt Disney production, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea doesn’t quite hit the mark as a cinematic adaptation of a literary text, it nevertheless succeeds wildly as an auditory and visual spectacle. As the first science fiction film to be shot in CinemaScope, this Technicolor film resonates with some absolutely lavish color schemes, beautiful underwater photography, and crisp portraits of the main characters.
Add to that the wonderful score by Paul Smith, and you have yourself a borderline operatic experience in which repetitive leitmotifs guide the viewer off the California coast, into the vast Pacific, and underneath the ocean in Captain Nemo’s proto-steampunk submarine, the Nautilus.
Based on the eponymous Jules Verne novel, this Richard Fleischer directed movie features James Mason as Captain Nemo, a mysterious man who is a renegade madman/visionary. He and his crew have been sailing underneath the Pacific in a (for its time) technologically advanced submarine, destroying warships in its wake. On board are his three captives, all survivors of an American naval vessel that he ordered destroyed. The three men could not be more different, in both personality and temperament. There’s the brawny Ned Land (Kirk Douglas); the erudite scientist, Professor Pierre Aronnax (Paul Lukas); and his neurotic, stout assistant, Conseil (Peter Lorre). Of all three four leads, it is Mason and Lorre who steal the show.
Unfortunately, the film takes its slow time in revealing the thrust of the story; namely, that Captain Nemo was once enslaved on a penal colony and is now seeking revenge against the “hated nation†that persecuted him and was responsible for the death of his family. He’s learned to love life underneath the sea, finding it a palatable alternative to man’s humanity to man on the surface. Problem is: Nemo has become so filled with bitterness and hatred that he doesn’t realize that he’s not all that different from the warmongers he so dramatically opposes.
But it’s not really the slow moving and predictable plot that makes 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea an enjoyable moving watching experience. Instead, it’s the spectacle of it all. This is a movie in which special effects really are indeed quite special. Case in point is the famous sequence in which Ned Land (Douglas) battles a giant squid. As a Disney film, there are naturally some family friendly moments, such as when Ned sings a seafaring ditty, “A Whale of a Tale,†and a few lighthearted moments with a seal.
All told, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea is a work of movie magic, one that I am sure is a completely different experience watched in a theater.
May 29th, 2016 at 10:34 pm
This movie is even better when you see it in the theater when you’re 12 years old, as I did. That squid sequence has stuck with me for a long, long time.
May 29th, 2016 at 11:28 pm
This and JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH (also with James Mason) gave birth to my love of Jules Verne and Science Fiction. I saw both pre tween and was lost to the color and imagination and have been ever since.
For all the special effects and big budgets few films have the magic this one has.
The Disney film, is, of course, the superior of the two, an amazing work of eye candy (and yet it is at times thoughtful and never less than intelligent), that, as Bill says, begs to be seen on the big screen age about 12, even better if you could see it, as I did, in one of those old movie palaces that used to grace larger cities.
I agree with Jonathan’s assessment of the scene stealing talents of Mason and Lorre, but Lucas and Douglas both manage not to get too lost in roles that were different from their usual fare, particularly Douglas, who has an obvious good time as the rambunctious natural man Verne so often favored in his books, indeed his scenes with Lorre are among the films highlights character wise.
Since seeing this I have seen Nemo’s from Herbert Lom and Robert Ryan to Michael Caine but none of them match Mason’s suave sane but obsessed Nemo, a magnificent creation part hero and part Miltonian Lucifer. I seriously doubt anyone will ever approach him in the part.
May 30th, 2016 at 9:10 am
I’ll watch James Mason in anything. I’ll watch Peter Lorre in anything. I’ll watch Kirk Douglas in almost anything. And I’ll watch this movie (despite its Disneyfication) every chance I get.
May 30th, 2016 at 1:33 pm
I remember seeing this in a theater with my parents when it came out and then visiting Disneyland where I was able to walk through the set of the Nautilus and realize what they were able to capture on screen that made it all seem real. (As I recall, the Nautilus was, in reality, quite small)
May 30th, 2016 at 3:54 pm
At one time Disney had a small fleet of submarines down at Disney World in Orlando that ironically was among the ten largest submarine fleets in the world.
As a promo for the film they did a making of the movie special on the Disney series that showed how much of the underwater photography was done. Until THUNDERBALL it was the most extensive such underwater shooting that had been done for a movie.
This, and the wonderful Ray Harryhausen version of THE MYSTERIOUS ISLAND make a superb double feature. Despite being from different studios and with different Nemo’s the two films gel together wonderfully well.
And we really shouldn’t short change the direction by Richard Fleisher whose work ranged from NARROW MARGIN to THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK. It is easy to assign all the credit in Disney films to the production, but directors like Fleisher and Robert Stevenson contributed a great deal to the best Disney films.
May 30th, 2016 at 4:58 pm
David, Didn’t that promo for the film win an award (an Emmy) in spite of it being a promo for a film? I remember seeing that at the time and was disappointed that it wasn’t among the “extras” on the DVD of the film.
May 31st, 2016 at 5:24 am
What Bill said (up there), except I was only about 6 when we saw it. The squid, Kirk singing “Whale of a Tale” were both embedded in my memory since then.
May 31st, 2016 at 1:56 pm
Randy,
I think you are right that the hour long promo for the film won an Emmy, but deservedly so. It really is a fascinating look at the making of the movie and the difficulties of bringing Verne’s novel to life — especially in that time period when underwater film was still largely in its infancy.
May 31st, 2016 at 3:43 pm
I first saw this film in the theater in 1954 at age 12. I just watched it again on dvd and enjoyed it except for one thing. I found Kirk Douglas annoying in almost every scene that he was in. His clowning around and happy go lucky persona just struck a wrong note in the film. I guess this is just a personal reaction on my part but I was disappointed in his character. Walt Disney movies seem to always have this type of nonsense back then.
May 31st, 2016 at 4:16 pm
My reaction, too, Walker. I’ll bet as a kid, though, I’d have loved it.
Douglas’s clowning around, that is.
May 31st, 2016 at 11:41 pm
Regarding the Disneyland “promo”:
Remember that in 1956, this wasn’t a common practice; Disney, MGM, and Warners made their deals with ABC contingent on using the series to promote new theatrical releases.
That Walt Disney went all the way with such shows … well, that was Disney.
Had ABC had color in 1956, who knows what he might have done.
The DVD of Darby O’Gill And The Little People includes its ABC “promo” show as a feature; why Disney wouldn’t include the 20,000 show on that DVD seems strange …