...a fine production that stands the test of time.
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Probably everyone's most vivid recollection from Disney's 1954 movie version of Jules Verne's "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" is the fight with the giant squid. Am I right?
I believe in the novel it was a giant octopus, but Disney got closer to the truth as squids in the deepest seas are believed to grow as large as the one pictured in the film. Anyway, it's such a vivid image, it has survived nearly fifty years now in my own memory, and though I hadn't seen the film since I was a kid, I'm happy to report that both the movie and the squid are holding up fine on DVD.
Naturally, it helps that the Disney studios did the movie proud by dressing it out in a fancy two-disc, special-edition set, transferred the original CinemaScope dimensions as closely as possible, and remixed the sound in Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround. Every little bit helps, resulting in a film that's as beautiful to look at today as it was when it was made.
One of Disney's first live-action adventures, the movie was the most costly Hollywood had ever made up until that time. Obviously, no expense was spared in the studio's attempt to make a super spectacular that still looks spiffy even by our contemporary standards. The care with which Disney artists and model-makers created the Nautilus submarine is especially noteworthy, producing a ship that remains the archetype for such sci-fi craft today. Even the film's stars were the best to be found: Kirk Douglas, James Mason, Peter Lorre, Paul Lukas. It's a fine production that stands the test of time.
The novel was written in 1870 by Jules Verne, a pioneer in the field of science fiction and a gold mine for moviemakers in the twentieth century. Think of "From the Earth to the Moon," "A Journey to the Center of the Earth," "Around the World in Eighty Days," and "The Mysterious Island," among others. In "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea," Verne wrote about deep-sea submarines, diving suits, and atomic power long before they were commonplace, so his science fiction was prescient fiction, now fact.
Set in 1868, just after the American Civil War, the story begins with a series of warships being sunk by a mysterious "sea monster," a creature apparently capable of devouring whole vessels at a single gulp. Cut next to explanatory scenes of three of our main characters, starting with Ned Land (Douglas), a swaggering, brawling harpooner with a girl on each arm. Following Ned, we meet Professor Pierre Aronnax (Lukas), a noted oceanologist on a fact-finding expedition to investigate the monster, along with his apprentice, Conseil (Lorre, in one of his rare nonthreatening roles). Later, after the three are shipwrecked, they are taken aboard the submarine Nautilus by Captain Nemo (Mason), a seething genius who is using his mighty underwater boat to take vengeance on a Mankind he thinks has gone too far in the ways of war.
The ocean supplies all of Nemo's wants, and the undersea photography remains stunning. The fight with the giant squid is a highlight of the film, to be sure, but just admiring the interior of the Nautilus is a pleasure. I remember the first time I visited Disneyland in the late 50's, the highlight of my trip was getting to see the actual sets used for the submarine, looking even more impressive in person than they were in the movie.
Anyway, while Douglas is typically heroic and down-to-earth, Lukas is typically brainy, and Lorre is unnecessary comic relief, it's James Mason as Captain Nemo who's the standout character. Nemo is no cardboard villain but a complex individual--an erudite, cultured, and civilized gentleman, who places what he sees as the greater good above the lesser life or two. He believes he's doing the world a favor by sinking warships and munitions vessels at will. Ned simply thinks he's mad, and Nemo's penchant for playing Bach's familiar Toccata and Fugue in D minor on his salon organ in the manner of clichéd madmen everywhere helps to reinforce that notion. Yet Nemo sees himself not as a psychotic murderer but as an avenger and a defender of life. It seems that his losing his family in some shadowy, long-ago persecution has given him an intense hatred of Mankind's evils. Be that as it may, Mason plays the part with a shrewd awareness of the Captain's strengths and liabilities, and he creates a thoroughly fascinating figure, at once malign and sympathetic.
Still, no matter how heavy things get, we're never too far from a Disney movie here, as a song by Ned reminds us. It's one of the few times (maybe the only time) Douglas gets to sing and dance on screen, as he does a little sea chantey, "A Whale of a Tale," aboard a Navy ship. Then, too, there's Esmeralda, Nemo's adorable pet seal that ensures kids in the audience will want a new animal around the house to cuddle. These small Disneyeque touches aside (OK, those, an altered ending, and a rather silly cannibal sequence), the movie does a commendable job translating the book to the screen.
In all, "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" is a good adventure movie that does justice to Verne's classic novel. Aided by composer Paul Smith's music, which underscores and clarifies each scene, the film is a vision of beauty and excitement for the eye and ear. It's still fun to watch after all these years.
Video:
Second only to "The Great Escape" and equal to "It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World," this is the widest screen size I've seen transferred to DVD. The film's original 2.55:1 CinemaScope ratio is rendered here at about 2.30:1 across a normal television screen, plenty wide enough to satisfy the demands of the grand undersea cinematography. Being THX certified and enhanced for widescreen TV's is icing on the cake. The Technicolor video is rich and deep and fairly well defined, if a tad fuzzy during motion sequences. I did notice that some scenes seemed slightly distorted horizontally, squeezed as though not quite properly decompressed with the right anamorphic lens; but it's never enough to distract one from the movie. Besides, it may have just been my imagination. I also noticed a touch of grain in darker areas and in underwater shots, but, generally speaking, I found it to be a fine image all the way around.
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[release]10836[/release]