The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2021: 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954), directed by Richard Fleischer

 

The Trailer

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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

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2021: The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964), directed by Anthony Mann

 

The Trailer

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The Appropriate Tune - "Empire" by Shakira

     It is said that all empires must one day fall, and the reason it is said is because of Rome. To the untrained eye it might seem inconceivable that the Roman Empire would have collapsed the way it did; They were one of the most dominant military and political entities on the planet at the time, stretching from Europe to Asia, from Britain to Africa, builders of vast networks of roads and aqueducts, writers of poetry and theater. Yet it was exactly that advancement, economically, socially,  and technologically that was the problem, that constant and inevitable clash between progress and regression that led to its slow dissolution and usurpation by the Mongols, the Visigoths, et cetera. A Roman Empire still existed afterwards for a couple centuries afterwards of course, but it was not, indeed could not, be the Rome that had been. Such is the way of life.

     The situation with Rome is not exactly like the one with the movie industry in the 1960s, but there are similarities. As with Rome the movie industry had grown over the years to be a veritable behemoth, and that size allowed it to perform grander and grander feats. Thus we saw the rise of ‘epics’ such as Ben-Hur and Marathon alum Saladin, films with large set pieces, large casts and large budgets. Then we saw them again, and again, until diminishing returns set in and the movie industry found that in their desperate rush to capitalize on this trend that it was difficult to fund any movies at all. Of course the movie industry didn’t collapse and epic films didn’t cease to exist, but for a while the dynamics of filmmaking certainly shifted. It’s doubtful whether the Hollywood New Wave in the 70s, the rise of Scorsese, Coppola, Spielberg, et al. would have happened if not for the problems the movie industry brought on itself, but surely that’s a thing of the past and has no bearing on the present day.

     Released in 1964, The Fall of the Roman Empire was written by Ben Barzman, Basilio Franchina and Philip Yordan and directed by Anthony Mann (El Cid, The Glenn Miller Story) through Samuel Bronston Productions. The year is 180 A.D. and Caesar Marcus Aurelius (Alec Guinness) has been overseeing the war effort against the tribal peoples of what is now called Germany. Aurelius has grown old and ill however, and his thoughts turn increasingly not to war but of peace, a Pax Romana that will unite all of the peoples of the Empire as free citizens of Rome. A monumental task worthy of a Caesar, and Aurelius decides that Gaius Metallus Livius (Stephen Boyd), commander of the Northern Army, is a man worthy of the title. Before that decision can be made final though, Aurelius is murdered by those unwilling to let peace damage their pocketbooks, and Aurelius’ son Commodus (Christopher Plummer) becomes Caesar instead. Gone are those lofty goals, gone is the Pax Romana, Commodus is here to Make Rome Great Again and he’s going to do it, no matter what his advisors or reality says otherwise. What does this mean for Livius and his beloved Lucilla (Sophia Loren)? What does this mean for Rome? I’m not sure, but if I had to guess, probably nothing good.

     An event like the collapse of the Roman Empire demands a film that is epic (natch) in scope, and on a visual level The Fall of the Roman Empire succeeds. The film takes place primarily in two locations, a military outpost in Germany and the city of Rome itself, and both look absolutely gorgeous. Huge panaramic shots that really emphasize on a visceral level the film’s scope, which is highlighted when Mann packs a scene with dozens if not hundreds of people. There are a few moments where a green screen or some other film trick is used to place a character where they’re not, but for the most part it seems natural, which for all their faults is really something you only really get with these kinds of films.

     Such stakes also call for some big fights, and The Fall of the Roman Empire has more than its share. These are not orderly affairs where soldiers jauntily march into battle, this is barely controlled chaos. Not a lot of blood, this is the 60s mind you, but there are people getting set on fire, horses falling and landing on people, it’s easy to forget sometimes that you’re watching a film and not a riot at a renaissance fair. While it might be considered to compare the level of Hollywood’s resources when compared to any other country’s film industry, The Fall of the Roman Empire blows Saladin out of the water. Despite both films centering around military conflicts, I don’t know if there’s anything in Saladin aside from Richard III’s invasion and the siege engine scene that compares to even the first battle in this film. Though there’s plenty of Hollywood ‘clanging two blades together over and over’ style sword fighting, there’s also a visceral quality to the combat that is effective even by modern standards.

     Of course it wouldn’t be a movie about Rome if the cast wasn’t made up of mostly white people, and Fall of the Roman Empire refuses to break the mould in that respect. Stephen Boyd is the sore thumb of the bunch, this blonde haired blue eyed guy with the flat American accent who looks more Teutonic than the fucking Germans they’re fighting, but you can tell by that chin dimple why they wanted him and he doesn’t do that bad. Sophia Loren is fine (and the only Roman in the cast who’s actually from Rome), a bit melodramatic but then these are melodramatic roles. Alec Guinness and James Mason (as Timonides) were on-screen veterans for a couple decades by this point so you know they know their way around a script, but the most entertaining performance is Christopher Plummer as the increasingly unhinged Caesar Commodus. The Emperor of Rome being insane is something of a cliche at this point, likely due to stories of Nero and Caligula entering the public consciousness, but Plummer does great work in making Commodus a truly despicable character. A delusional narcissist, bully, and a sniveling cretin, you start to dislike him the moment he gets on screen and by the end you absolutely despise. Which is good! You don’t need to make an antagonist some tragic figure, sometimes it’s enough to just have some piece of shit surrounded by other pieces of shit who wields too much power. Even though we learn a bit of Commodus’ backstory over the course of the film I wouldn’t say that he ever takes that step into becoming sympathetic, and I think Plummer’s performance helps cement that.

     That being said, The Fall of the Roman Empire is not simply a tale of morals, but of politics as well. Commodus and his coterie are certainly villainous in character, reveling in murder and upholding the institution of slavery, and in a grander sense represent the inability of the Roman state (or any state) to resolve the contradictions inherent within its design and thus its use of violence in order to maintain stability. Livius and his side are depicted as the heroes, but it is portrayed quite clearly that their opposition is just as much a political decision as it is an ethical one. Marcus Aurelius’ desire for a Pax Romana is predicated less so on philosophy and more so on building a unified bulwark against the Persians, and one of the major points in Timonides’ speech to the Senate is on the economical viability of free men over slaves (‘free’ in this context meaning peasantry rather than the romanticized American ‘freedom’ that we hear about today, even though conflation of the two was most likely intended by the screenwriter). Not to mention that all of Livius’ actions are made in order to maintain and even expand the hegemony of the Roman Empire, which ultimately makes him no different from Commodus aside from being more capable at it. The abolition of slavery is obviously a worthy cause and so we can support Livius in that way, but in the end they both represent failing attempts at stifling the progress of history, because the slaves would be freed and Rome would fall regardless of the wishes of these men but by the will of the masses. It’s a lot more nuanced of a film than I was expecting, even if it presents itself as some sort of melodrama.

 

     Speaking of Lucilla’s whining, there’s this thing that this movie does where a character has an internal monologue, but then they also just say things out loud sometimes as well. It only happens two times in the film, once with Marcus Aurelius and the other with Lucilla, and both times it doesn’t work. I can see where the scenes might have looked good on paper, but in execution it’s either the narration doesn’t really add anything to the scene or it makes the character in question look like someone with a severe mental illness rambling to himself on a street corner. Either have the character just say that narration out loud, this is the kind of movie where you could get away with that, or just have them stay silent and physically convey their emotions. Less is more and all that.

     One last word of warning to those prospective cinephiles out there, The Fall of the Roman Empire is advanced material if you’re not used to older films. Tops out at just under three hours, and no one talks like a real person. If you read through Shakespeare in high school and hated it then this might not be for you. It doesn’t skimp out on the action scenes though, if that’s what you’re into, and I think Livius and Lucilla’s star crossed romance set against the backdrop of political corruption and societal decay (which I’m sure bares no resemblance to these modern times) is enough to keep one invested. The Fall of the Roman Empire gets the recommendation, crack open a wineskin this Halloween and enjoy.

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2019: 11 Harrowhouse (1974), directed by Aram Avakian

The Trailer

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The Appropriate Tune: "Diamonds and Rust", by Joan Baez

       Sometimes it feels as if there is something of a square-rectangle situation when it comes to heist films. After all a heist film is just a subgenre of the crime film, and all a crime film needs to be considered so is to be centered around the nebulous field of crime. Either they are about criminals themselves or about those trying to catch criminals, and there are myriad possibilities when it comes  to the subject matter. Bank robberies, con artists, organized crime, even serial killers, as long as the film's central narrative deals with activities outside the law of its setting, then it can be considered a ‘crime film’. Just as a science fiction film ideally deals with some concept explained of theorized by science or a sword and sandals needs at least one sword and a pair of sandals, so too must a crime film have crime.

       A heist movie is more than just a crime movie though. Having the goal placed before you, seeing the characters build a plan from the ground up and seeing them execute it with clockwork precision (or not, as the case may be), there’s a methodology and artistry to it that’s fascinating to see in motion. Well it can be fascinating at the very least, I think a lot more people were invested in Ocean’s Eleven than they were Ocean’s Thirteen, and I don’t know if anyone knew The Sting even had a sequel. Still, if you’re looking for an easy way to build some suspense, have some folks steal something valuable from people who don’t want it stolen. Preferably people who are huge assholes so you don’t feel bad about them losing their valuable shit.  

       A British production but directed by an American, 11 Harrowhouse stars Charles Grodin (who also adapted the screenplay) as H.R. Chesser, a salesman whose job revolves around buying diamonds from London’s prestigious diamond supplier, located at 11 Harrowhouse, in order to sell them in New York. Chesser thinks himself as something of a schmuck, and it’s not hard to see where he’s coming from; He’s basically a glorified middleman, the men at Harrowhouse dislike him which means he gets stiffed when he tries to do business with them, and when you’re traveling to London six times a year that deficit is just going to increase. It’s the kind of situation that makes you jump at any deal you can get, and when industrialist Clive Massey offers him a million bucks to get a diamond for him, Chesser jumps. A million dollar diamond which is then promptly stolen, without any insurance or identification to say that the diamond had ever existed at all, and the finger of suspicion is pointed towards ‘the system’ taking back what was theirs. Yet another roadblock in the life of H.R. Chesser it seems, but Clive Massey offers a potential solution: Just rob 11 Harrowhouse. They’ve got 12 billion dollars worth of diamonds locked away in their vault, steal them and a million dollar debt will vanish like dust in the wind. So easy a child could do it, right? Also starring Candice Bergen as Chesser’s rich girlfriend Maren and James Mason as Watts.

       11 Harrowhouse is an odd duck of a movie. On the one hand, it has elements that I might attribute to noir films: the down-on-his-luck protagonist narrating to us throughout the course of the film, a morally ambiguous cast, and of course it doesn’t shy away from death. Yet at the same time there’s this relaxed atmosphere permeating the film that reminds one of those breezy European sex comedies of the period, Bruno Mattei and the like, and taking a brief dip towards the absurd for a while in the climax. I’ve seen it described as a spoof, which I suppose might be an adequate definition, but to be honest if it were intended to be a comedy then it was far too mild to be a good one. That could be a regional thing of course, raised on the films of Mel Brooks as I was my taste for spoofs may steer towards the broad, but I never thought of 11 Harrowhouse as a comedy once while I was watching it. Silly at times, but far too grounded to be a comedy.

       The crux of that issue lies with 11 Harrowhouse’s lead actor, Charles Grodin. I’m not familiar with Mr. Grodin’s acting work, but in this film he seems to have chosen one facial expression and kept it up through the entire film. Even his voiceover, which is more expressive than just about anything he does on screen sounds like he’s mumbling it himself on the subway. Now it could be argued that this milquetoast portrayal is intentional, juxtaposing the fact that he’s this mild-mannered guy, nebbish guy despite selling diamonds for a living, having an heiress as a girlfriend for the purposes of comedy, and masterminding a 12 billion dollar diamond heist, and I can certainly see that being the case. That being said, if he’s meant to be Woody Allen in Clint Eastwood’s body, I would have preferred they lean into that more, because as it is he feels like such a non-entity that occasionally I barely notice him on screen. The rest of the cast is fine, I like James Mason, Candice Bergen is good despite existing in this weird dimension of being a driving force of the film and a side character at the same time, it’s just Charles Grodin the human tranq dart that’s the odd man out.

       Despite that, I actually liked 11 Harrowhouse. A decent heist film with an imagination, it’s a film very of its time; From the smooth, smooth lounge music in the score down to how characters are shot talking in cars, it all points to a film that could have only been made in the early 70s. Since I happen to be into that style, shout out to my boy Lupin the 3rd, I don’t have a problem giving it the recommendation. I don’t think it’s going to be blowing anyone’s mind, but get yourself a glass of wine, maybe an 800,000 dollar diamond or two and have yourself a nice evening.