20000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954)
20000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954), directed by Richard Fleischer.
quote
Giant squid astern, Sir!
Captain Nemo is an early Evil Overlord, precursor to Ming and Blofeld. Note:
A genius.
Mentally fractured.
A law unto himself.
Kills without (much) qualm.
Grandiose dreams of all the oceans of the world as his domain.
Loyal minions.
Secret island lair...
...which will go boom when his enemies catch up with him.
It's a linear two-hour story. A US military vessel investigating ship sinkings by a "sea monster" is itself sunk. Three survivors go aboard the Nautilus (great steam-punk design before there was such a thing) and travel with it for a while, having assorted adventures. They are the only passengers to escape The End.
The casting ranges from the inspired: James Mason, born to play Nemo, to the adequate: Paul Lukas as the ineffectually decent scientist, to the very strange: Peter Lorre as the prof's mordantly witty "apprentice".
Kirk Douglas co-stars with Mason, as rebellious as the Captain is disciplined. The character is certainly personality-plus, more than the role requires. I confess I fast forwarded through his singing bits.
I want to mention two other character actors in a strange new setting: Ted de Corsia, usually a gangster, is here the captain of the naval vessel. Nemo's loyal First Mate is played by Robert J. Wilke, almost always a western villain, as when waiting at the station with Lee Van Cleef in High Noon (1952) and when he brought a gun to James Coburn's knife fight in The Magnificent Seven (1960).
The effects are pretty decent, with two really great parts: walking on the ocean floor and the fight with the giant squid. The actors spend a lot of time in the water.
Notes:
Photographed by Franz Planer.
Harper Goff was the art director. Does his Nautilus reappear in Mysterious Island (1961)?
Minus points for the cute seal.
Nemo's island has parabolic dishes, amazing for 1868: radio waves were predicted in 1867 and first demonstrated in 1887.
I read the book as a boy. I seem to remember that his power source was electricity somehow extracted from seawater. By 1954 it was natural to presume Nemo was an early inventor of atomic power.
Nemo was some sort of prince from India. He attacked only warships.
Available on Blu-ray if you can pry it away from Disney. Image quality is just fair.
I no longer have the Blu-ray and my notes don't indicate if it has a commentary track, but the old DVD did and I listened to that: Rudy Behlmer interviewing the director, a pleasant chat about the production.
Fleischer asked Walt Disney: "Why me?" Disney had seen The Happy Time (1952) and said: "Anyone who can make Bobby Driscoll look like a real actor is a great director".
Disney and Fleischer's father had been intensely competitive in the animation market. Max Fleischer's studio had produced the popular Superman and Popeye cartoons. Richard insisted on getting his father's permission to work for Disney. Dad: "Sure, grab it. Tell Disney he has great taste in directors".
Walt and Max later become friends. The rapprochement began here, when Max and his wife were invited to a dinner party at the end of filming. All the Disney employees "stolen" from Fleischer Studios were invited.
There was no story when the director came to the project. He and screenwriter Earl Felton went back to the original book and found no story there either, just a series of incidents. They decided to make it a "prison break" plot, with Nemo as the warden and his guests as the prisoners.
The combination aqualung and diving suit with lead-weighted shoes was a new invention. He claims this was the most people underwater together until that time.
An early CinemaScope project, he had to learn about it on the job. The entire film was shot with one lens and that was rented from Fox.
Except: the scene of the Nautilus entering an undersea cavern had to be done with a standard spherical lens. Harper Goff created a specially "squashed" miniature submarine that would look normal when projected through an anamorphic lens.
Fleischer learned scuba diving so he could direct underwater.
The squid battle was filmed twice at great expense: "The first version was a disaster in every respect". Disney called upon his studio effects department to create a proper animatronic squid.
James Mason nearly drowned when being rescued by Kirk Douglas. He did the scene again without complaint.
Mason spoke to the seal as if it were a human actor: "That was very well done. Have another herring".
