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 2017 - Compulsion (1959), directed by Richard Fleischer

Has it been another year already? I certainly feel 365 days closer to death, but then that just me getting character for the season. That's right, it's October again here in the Thunderbird estate, as well as the rest of the world, which means it's time for another 31 movie reviews/impressions/musings. You're gonna see horror, you're gonna see sci-fi, you're gonna see a whole bunch of weird shit I watched that can loosely relate to the celebration of Halloween. There's a couple clunkers, quite a few gems, and everything in between. Check them out, you just might find your next favorite movie.

The Trailer
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The Appropriate Tune: "The Mercy Seat", by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds

     Before the advent of psychology and psychiatry, humanity had a very limited understanding of itself, why we act we do. Before we knew what epilepsy was, we assumed that person was possessed by demons. Before we knew what post traumatic stress disorder was, we assumed that those people had shellshock or were even cowards (the British army in WWI even had a habit of shooting those they believed to be ‘cowards’ and ‘deserters’ in fact). Before we knew that the lack of certain chemicals in the brain could severely impact human behavior, we assumed that those people were evil, or monsters, rather than those in need of medical attention. To be fair, since ‘medical attention’ in those days could mean ‘get a hole drilled through your skull’ or any other sort of horrific bullshit you could imagine (amputating limbs and infecting people with tuberculosis was also pretty popular), maybe they were better off being left alone.

     Then again,just because we understand something, or believe we understand it, doesn’t mean we can’t make assumptions. In fact it is that arrogance, that belief that we know more than others and are better than them, that has lead to the biggest blights on our record as a species. Colonialism, holy wars, genocide, corruption, all the way down to plain old simple murder, it all boils down to ‘I’m better than you, so submit’. Even if we don’t believe in witchcraft and demons anymore, even if we’re now ‘genre-savvy’ in regards to the universe, in many ways it’s like we never left the trees.

     Arrogance is the name of the game for 1959’s Compulsion, directed by film great Richard Fleischer (20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Fantastic Voyage, and so on), and starring Orson Welles, Diane Varise and a very young Dean Stockwell, decades before he played a cigar-chomping hologram on Quantum Leap. Based on a novel by Meyer Levin, which was itself based on a 1924 Chicago court case, Compulsion centers around two rich college students: Arthur Straus, a charming yet domineering extrovert and compulsive liar and Judd Steiner, an antisocial wunderkind with an obsession for all things Nietzsche (this was before douchebags flocked to the works of Ayn Rand, you see). Possessed of wealth, status and popularity, convinced of their own innate superiority to their fellow man through modern philosophy, Artie and Judd engage in a series of crimes based on the desire for ‘experiences’, or in the case of Artie, ‘shits and giggles’. Breaking and entering, robbery, attempted hit-and-run, attempted rape, culminating in the kidnapping and violent murder of a young boy named Paul Kessler. The perfect crime, or so they think, until a pair of glasses is discovered on Kessler’s body. Glasses that happen to belong to Judd Steiner.

     When the case eventually reaches court, which it must as a movie based on a court case, and threat of capital punishment seems less a possibility and more a reality, the wealthy parents of Straus and Steiner retain the services of Jonathan Wilk (Welles), a well-known and talented attorney. A noted atheist and humanitarian who champions causes rather than bank accounts, Wilk decides to tackle the case, building a case that Artie and Judd are mentally ill, and should be imprisoned rather than being put to death. However, two prominent state psychiatrists have already dubbed the two ‘completely sane’, and so are fit to stand trial. Sane or insane? The answer to that question holds two lives in the balance, and would set a precedent for the years to come.

     In a lot of ways, Compulsion is very similar to another film that’s been discussed on this blog, to the extent that they might have been based off of the same case: Rope, by the great Alfred Hitchcock. Both featured two young high-society men, the affable mastermind and the silent genius who decide to murder someone because they can, and much of the movie is centered around the unraveling of that so-called perfect crime. Both feature the affable character egging people on, playing fast and loose with the victims and the investigators, while the genius character slowly cracks under the pressure. Both deal heavily on Nietzsche's idea of the superman, of not being bound by the laws of other men in a postwar society. Hell, the actors in Rope even look a bit like Artie and Judd, albeit in color. It can’t be a coincidence.

     Were I to compare the two though, I’d have to go with Rope as the better film, in large part because it feels like you’re only getting half of a movie in Compulsion. You find out that Artie and Judd murder Kessler but you never see it happen, you get a hint of the investigation but not all that much, you see a glimpse of the trial but mostly the end of it, it all goes by the wayside to focus on Artie and Judd’s rocky relationship. Which is fine to a degree, because the actors do a terrific job of highlighting Artie and Judd’s personality disorders, making them definitely seem capable of the act of murder, but it all feels like a lost opportunity in retrospect. I mean the driving force of the film is this murder, you’d think it would be more than a footnote in the film. I could understand why Fleischer wouldn’t show the act or the body, this was still the 50s after all, but couldn’t there be a scene at least hinting it? Showing them case out the area perhaps, choosing Kessler as the one they would kill? Wouldn’t be much, but it would keep the film from feeling truncated.

     Orson Welles puts on a subdued but excellent performance as you’d expect but his part of the film, in particular his closing statements at the end of trial, ends up feeling incongruous with the first half of the film. It’s a great monologue, and were I in the courtroom that day I would certainly been affected, but that speech came after an hour of seeing Artie and Judd living it up. Not once do they appear remorseful of what they did or worthy of sympathy, although Fleischer tries to claim it by mentioning absentee parents and how Judd seems ‘so sad’, neither of which are ever really addressed all that much. They don’t even appear insane, which is the crux of the case for and against them, so by the time that Wilk appears in the story you’re kind of already rooting for them to get what they deserve. Which might have been the point all along, maybe Fleischer was making us root for the death penalty like the public in the film (again, implied not shown) and then having Wilk pull us back from the brink. Which I appreciate, but for me it wasn’t all that effective. Artie and Judd were too good at being unlikable, and I’m a guy who is already completely unsympathetic to rich assholes trying to get away with blatantly ignoring the law.

     That being said, it is a very well-made film with some equally great performances, so I’d say it’s worth a watch. Perhaps in a double feature with Rope, so you can compare and contrast at your leisure. Just don’t get it into your head that you could get away with it, that you could find a way around the law, where these characters failed. If you learn anything from this film, it’s that being an ubermensch just isn’t worth the hassle.