Too much of everything

Terrible acting, screenplay and direction.

Pretty Good

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Flat-footed direction by highly-regarded-in-his-day Stuart Paton, plus a cast of unimpressive nonentities, plus a huge amount of boringly repetitive underseas footage (which no doubt seemed far more novel and fascinating back in 1916), this movie is further burdened by poor acting particularly from Captain Nemo's Allen Holubar (an actor/writer/director with an extensive array of credits who died at the young age of 35 in 1923). Mind you, Holubar's make-up is poor and he is obviously receiving very little (if any) guidance from director Paton. Also something of a dead loss is Professor Aronnax as played by Dan Hanlon in his final of three movie roles. (Don't know what profession he moved into, or any other details at all, except that he died in 1951). The movie is reputed to have cost Universal a staggering $200,000, of which the studio recovered less than half on its initial domestic release. Fortunately, the movie was more popular in Europe. Available on a superb, full-length (104 minutes), multi-tinted DVD from Grapevine Video.

This screen adaptation of Jules Verne's novel seems to have been timely. Two recent innovations changed the story's relevancy. The film was released in 1916, when German U-Boats were showing the effectiveness of submarines in war, including the sinking of the Lusitania. Verne's science fiction had only recently become more fully realized. Additionally, deep sea travelling was to be exploited by science. Indeed, some of the best sequences in this film are just of fish and sharks in the marine gardens as the characters look through Captain Nemo's magic window. Another invention, the motion-picture underwater photography by the Williamson brothers allowed for Verne's fiction to be more fittingly portrayed with cinema. Certainly, this was a remarkable effect for the art form in 1916, and I think the underwater scenes remain the best parts of this film, with the exception of the cheesy octopus attack.Above water, the plot is plodding and confused. Unfortunately, the filmmakers tried to combine Verne's "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea" with his sequel to it, "The Mysterious Island". Consequently, through most of the photoplay, there are two parallel narratives loosely and convolutedly connected. Nemo is also transformed into a dark-skinned Muslim and his vengeful mission is changed, and a lengthy and foolish epilogue is added to make sense of the hodgepodge. The science-fiction parts faithful to the title novel are superior to and mix poorly with the added-on exoticism. In addition, the acting is dated. On the other hand, the shots of fish, sharks, the submarine and the diving suits are straightforward and retain interest especially due to the age and precedence.

When I read during the opening credits of the 1916 adaptation of Jules Verne's "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea," immediately I assumed the frame of mind that I always do when watching early films, so as not to criticize it's lack of special effects or advanced film techniques. Immediately I was immensely impressed at the transfer from book to film, as the film followed the story closely and faithfully.Unfortunately, this only lasted for about the first ten minutes of the film, which ultimately proved to take Verne's work and butcher it in every way imaginable. Probably the most jarring change to the story is that they decided to not only adapt 20,00 Leagues, but also another Verne novel, Mysterious Island, into this film. So the result is that you have two totally different stories taking place that don't at all seem to fit together, until finally they come together in the bizarre conclusion, which makes absolutely no sense in respect to the novel.My current theory is that because so much of the original novel of 20,000 Leagues was decades beyond the reach of the filmmakers to be able to put on screen, so they probably had to look to an entirely separate novel just to have enough material to fill a full length film. Sadly, it reminds me of those terrible songs that radio stations sometimes come up with when they combine two popular songs together that have a similar beat, resulting in something that is not quite equal to but definitely less than the originals. One such bizarre hybrid comes to mind involving Closer, by Nine Inch Nails, and Garbage's #1 Crush.The basic, basic, basic plot structure remains, but literally 95% of the story is gone. There is rumor of a massive sea monster and the crew of the Abraham Lincoln set off to capture it. Strangely enough, at one point it passes a mere few meters from their ship in broad daylight, and the crew can clearly see the steel plated sides and the rivets holding it together, even the bridge and periscope, and yet they still think it's a sea monster. I'll attribute that to the inability to emulate the Nautilus's movements as described in the novel, but in this way we also have to sacrifice the entirety of the ship's glorious design and function, which is not even described in dialogue. For the most part, we see a single room, which looks like an old Victorian bedroom with one wall that looks like it belongs in a boiler room. Probably the worst crime that the film commits is in the character of Captain Nemo. Granted, Nemo in the novel is not exactly the most charming and charismatic man, but it is as if they set out in this film to create a man as far from the original description as humanly possible. As a result, we get a bizarre spectacle that looks like a disgruntled Santa Clause in blackface. And not only that, throughout the film he gives several displays of compassion that the original Nemo would have scoffed at. Indeed, at one point, he torpedoes a ship, and then afterwards and then almost faints as he worries about the safety of the victims. What the hell?? And incidentally, Verne's Nautilus didn't have torpedoes, although he did use it as a ramming weapon.In the film's defense, the underwater photography is truly impressive given the time that it was filmed, and surely knocked 1916 audiences, most of whom had probably never seen the underwater world, out of their seats. This would certainly explain the seemingly endless lingering on these scenes. Their is also an interesting allusion to another Verne novel, as at one point in their underwater tour they come across a decayed shipwreck, which Nemo describes as "the wreck of an old blockade runner."And the worst thing about the bizarre personification of Nemo in this film is the backstory that was invented for the film which, amazingly, is introduced with this intertitle - "Captain Nemo reveals the tragic secret of his life, which Jules Verne never told."What follows is the most bizarre story imaginable, which claims that Nemo was previously some kind of empirical royalty who lived in an empire "beyond the sea." One man wrongs him, which doesn't explain his subsequent disdain, and even hatred, for all of mankind of all nations, nor does anything explain why he took to the sea. And incidentally, Nemo is a man of art, science, biology, history, astronomy, etc. The transition from his old life to the one we see is totally senseless. It may very well be that this was one of the first major films to set the trend of adapting novels to film, and while modern adaptations still make ridiculous changes to story and characters where they don't belong, at least those inexplicable liberties seem to have diminished since 1916!

I found this film extraordinary, if for no other reason than the fact, that that they used underwater photography showing divers in deep sea helmets using what looked to be rifles with spears attached (early spear guns, I imagine) actually shooting at a large group of sharks swimming around them. I also didn't see any air lines attached to any of these divers, however, if you looked closely, you could see some air bubbles come out of the helmets of the divers every so often. They must have been using some type of compressed air with a regulator, however when I queried Google, I was informed that SCUBA wasn't invented until 1939 for the US Navy and the air regulator hadn't been invented until 1943 by Jacques Cousteau. There was a device that contained compressed air in a belt attached to a diver's helmet that was invented in 1825 but that would only allow a diver to stay under 7 minutes. Were they really able to get all of the shots with the divers within that time frame. Very curious. Does anyone have the technical details for how this film was accomplished? I give this film a 9 for technology and a 5 for story line and acting for a 7 overall.