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The Appropriate Tune - "Submarine" by L'Imperatrice
When I was younger, my tastes in literature tended to be a tad more extreme than that of my peers at the time, even at an early age. Comics books and manga sure, and a step above that to pop culture staples like Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter, but then I would go even further beyond. Malory, Cervantes, Doyle, Swift, Kafka, Kerouac, Burroughs, Farren, and many more besides. I don’t know if it made me a better person or anything so much as it proved that I had too much time on my hands, but it was certainly an enjoyable way to spend some time. Sitting down, getting comfortable and letting yourself sink into the world of a story is an experience unlike any other. Even film cannot compare to the level of sheer immersion a book can provide in the correct circumstances.
Which leads us into “Twenty Thousands Leagues Under the Sea”, written by French novelist Jules Verne. When it came to science fiction I had always been drawn more to the flashy, allegorical tales of H.G. Wells, with its extraterrestrial war machines and horrific beastmen, but I always had a soft spot for Verne’s famous work. Maybe because my childhood had been full of hi-tech Bat Caves and giant robots, but the idea of this mysterious genius who lived on his own terms in a fantastical machine of his own design really captured my imagination. As it did for many others, the story has popped up again and again over the years, from Alan Moore’s League of Extraordinary Gentlemen comic book series to the anime Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water. I’ve covered adaptations of Wells’ work in the past so it only seemed right to get to Verne as well, and when it comes to him there seems to be one film that stands out among the rest. Makes things a lot easier, let me tell you.
Released in 1954, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea was written by Earl Felton, directed by Richard Fleischer (who also did Marathon alum Compulsion) and produced by Walt Disney through Walt Disney Productions, based on the novel Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne. The year is 1868, and the story that’s on everyone’s mind is that of a mysterious ‘sea monster’ which has been attacking and sinking ships across the South Pacific, destroying cargo and sailor’s lives in the process. So severe is this problem that the U.S. government charters a ship to go on a hunt for the beast, bringing on the respected Professor Pierre Aronnax (Paul Lukas) and his assistant Conseil (Peter Lorre) as a scientific advisor. For several months they travel the seas with no luck, until one day while coming to the aid of a wrecked ship they come across the infamous themselves. They fire at the thing, but it avoids their cannons and rams into the ship full force, crippling it and sending Prof. Aronnax, Conseil, and crewman Ned Land (Kirk Douglas) overboard into the watery depths. The End.
But not really. As Aronnax and the others drift through the sea, they make an astounding discovery and uncover an even more amazing truth: the so-called ‘sea monster that had been the terror of merchant mariners was not a living creature at all, but a submersible ship -- a technological marvel the likes of which has never been seen before. This submarine, known as the Nautilus , is captained by Nemo (James Mason), a mysterious man whose great intelligence is matched only by his hatred for those warlike savages that inhabit the surface world. Not quite prisoners aboard the Nautilus but not quite guests either, the three men have little choice but to accompany Nemo and his crew in their underwater utopia as they travel twenty thousand leagues under the sea (a league in nautical terms being equivalent to three miles). To Ned Land however, just because you have little choice doesn’t mean you can’t fight.
While cinema is a combination of aural, verbal and visual storytelling, there are certain films that are made or broken principally on a visual level. If the xenomorph in Ridley Scott’s Alien looked like something off of Star Trek, the film would not have become the franchise it is today. If Star Wars lacked the lightsabers or the Death Star it would be remembered now as some kind of half-baked Buck Rogers ripoff. So it was with 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea; If you don’t get the Nautilus right, then you don’t get the film right. Fleischer and Disney get it right in my opinion, without going overboard as is so often the case with adaptations of these stories. The Nautilus’ angular design is unlike anything that would have been seen on ships at the time, yet its interior is rooted firmly in the Victorian age. It’s aesthetic is rooted in that Victorian conception of what advanced technology would look like and yet it is recognizable as a submarine to the modern eye, because it is basically a modern submarine. I've always been a fan of Kevin O’Neill’s mollusc-inspired Nautilus, but it’s also a little too steampunk to be believable. This Nautilus however, even though it is clearly fictional it still feels like something that could have actually existed at one point in time, which is what really makes it work.
So there’s money shots aplenty of the Nautilus, footage of it moving underwater through water (they get a lot of mileage out of the five seconds of their model ship slowly chugging through the ocean) and when the film isn’t doing that it’s probably showing some B-roll of ocean life; some dolphins, a whale, the corpse of a sea turtle and so on. Rather simple stuff today, but remember that the 40s and 50s were when deep sea diving was first developed. Two years after this film came out Jacques Cousteau released his landmark marine biology film The Silent World, which up until Fahrenheit 9/11 was the only documentary to ever win the Palme d’Or, so the bits of undersea life we see in this film likely went over huge with movie audiences at the time. Not so much these days perhaps, but there is a simplicity to it that I can’t help but find charming.
Cramped quarters make for a small cast, but 20,000 Leagues makes the most with what they’ve got. James Mason, who we just saw a while back in The Fall of the Roman Empire is once again a highlight here as Captain Nemo, taking what in other hands might be a one-note antagonist and transforming him into a multifaceted and ultimately tragic character. Peter Lorre as Conseil is the stooge, as he is in every movie where he isn’t the villain, but it works because he’s so damn good at it. Kirk Douglas on the other hand left me wanting. He was clearly cast as the ruggedly handsome, two-fisted action hero of the film (despite this film having little action), which he does, but the rest of the time I found his performance came across as overbearing and tiresome. It seems like the filmmakers were really pushing for the tension between Nemo and Ned Land in the novel to be the primary conflict of the film, but Land is so consistently portrayed as childish, underhanded and obnoxious that Nemo ends up coming across as the more reasonable one, despite being the guy who has been murdering people since the start of the film. I mean if Nemo didn’t chuck this dipshit into the nearest trench after the first five minutes then he can’t be that bad.
Of course it wouldn't be a Disney adaptation of a public domain without substantial changes to the source material. Turning Ned Land into what amounts to a protagonist is one. The need to ‘Disneyfy’ the story up with musical numbers, comedic gags, a pet sea lion and portraying native peoples as cannibalistic savages who talk only in grunts is another. The primary change however is transforming the Nautilus from a vessel that runs on electricity in the novel to what is clearly implied to be atomic energy in the film, and from that the entire tone of the story changes. The original novel was about a man driven by tragedy towards revenge on mankind, and while that's still present in the film it’s hard to deny that Nemo is probably right to keep the nations away from nuclear power for as long as possible. This being a film made in the 50s however, the moral is ultimately about how good atomic power is and how America is totally ready to use it. Following that thought though, it’s hard to even recognize Nemo as a villainous character after a certain point; Aronnax and the other try to paint Nemo as a hypocrite for decrying the surface world’s violence while using violence himself, but really what it ends up doing is proving that Nemo’s opposition to war isn’t just rhetoric but something that he will take action against. Who he targets seems to trend towards indiscriminate, which is where the moral ambiguity lies, but the film also tries to do it when the target is clear, like ships transporting illegal goods from slave labor camps, which I mean...if the ‘just following orders’ excuse doesn’t work for military officers I don’t know why we’d make an exception for sailors. In trying to blame the black and white morality it is Nemo, for all his brusqueness, that more often than not comes across as noble and the stowaways as hypocrites. Although I’m not sure if that was the intent or just the subtext. You can’t have it both ways Walt.
Modern movie goers will likely struggle with 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. It’s a two hour long action adventure with very little in the way of action, even though it’s probably got twice as much of it than in the original book. If you were a fan of films like Star Trek: The Motion Picture however, low impact spectacle films, then you’ll probably get something out of this one. Which I was, and while it’s not a 1:1 adaptation of the source material I’m still giving it the recommendation. Break out the seaweed cigars and baby octopus pudding this Halloween and make a night of it
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