The Mysterious Island

I really enjoyed this mess of a movie from MGM, based on Jules Verne's book. Lionel Barrymore stars as Count Dakkar (Captain Nemo in the book), a brilliant scientist and inventor with a volcanic island laboratory. The island is part of a larger kingdom known as Hetvia, and Dakkar's research efforts are put on hold when his former friend Falon (Montagu Love) decides to stage a coup. He tortures Dakkar in order to obtain his many scientific secrets, but Dakkar escapes and joins a group of opposing forces in an effort to stop Falon.

This was a troubled production, taking years to complete. It started out as a silent, but as sound came into vogue, they reshot only parts with full sound, while leaving the majority of the film silent, using title cards, and also adding sound effects and a score. Lucien Hubbard wrote the script and got final screen credit for direction, too, although footage had been shot as far back as 1926 by directors Maurice Tourneur and Benjamin Christensen. The movie is an exciting adventure for the first 2/3 or so, but when the action goes undersea, we head into fun & bizarre territory, with a race of duck-faced undersea people, a giant octopus, and an alligator with a horn glued on his snout. Being Pre-Code, this has some surprising moments of violence. The disparate pieces of this don't go together smoothly, and the ending seems kind of rushed, but I liked this oddity a lot. Recommended.

After three years MGM finally completed and released The Mysterious Island in 1929 with sound grafted into the film. Though the grafting is rather evident it doesn't take away from the film itself and the enjoyment thereof.

This could easily have been a disaster for MGM. In their first two years the production costs of Ben-Hur and The Big Parade had the top brass worried. Fortunately both proved to be box office smashes and insured the survival of the studio. The Mysterious Island had that kind of ambition behind it and didn't do as well as those two classics, but by that time MGM's survival was guaranteed.

Apparently just as they were about to release it, sound was gaining more popularity and it was decided to add some dialog and sound effects. In a book about the Barrymore family Louis B. Mayer thanked whatever Gods he worshiped that the hero and villain of his film, Lionel Barrymore and Montagu Love were both theatrically trained players with marvelous speaking voices.

In fact one of the great things about the film is that the longest sequence with dialog is right at the beginning and it's between Barrymore and Love and it sets the stage for the whole film. In 1929 just about every film had overacting in it as players were getting used to sound. But there's not a trace of it in this sequence as both of these veterans by instinct knew how to handle the microphone.

MGM had a lot of shooting problems getting the special effects right, but for their time what came out was pretty darn good.

What they didn't do is use any part of Jules Verne's book other than the title. Barrymore is both a member of the nobility and a scientist who lives and works on his own island off the coast of some Balkan country. His island is a dead volcano the peasants all work for Barrymore in his experiments, but hardly in the same way they did for Dracula or Frankenstein. Montagu Love is another noble who has ambitions to take over the kingdom and would love to get his hands on the prototype deep sea submarine that Barrymore is constructing. He does of course and Barrymore gives chase down to the depths where they encounter a host of underwater marvels including giant sea creatures and a race of men who've developed just as man has in the deep ocean.

This early attempt at science fiction is a landmark film and deserves to be recognized as such. Though Jules Verne wouldn't have recognized his story, the film is still a good one and even the obvious grafting of sound and dialog on the film doesn't hamper it's entertainment value in the least.

I saw this a one AM last week on a TMC linel Barrymore marathon.C'mon anything thats labeled sci-fi and 1929 you just gotta love.This semi-talkie has the usual Vernian speculation (distant cousins of man living in the sea a la Blacklagoon) combined with twenties class conflict and Ceasarianism. But the real show is the special effects. Forgive me but those old silent FX just seem so much more "special" than the ones we have to day. Their cool if nothing for their age and a unique surreal quality that you don't see in talkies. Don't beleive me just ask the sea people.

In the days before the advent of the Talking Picture, few stage performers were destined to succeed in making the transition. Among the more prominent of these thespians was Lionel Barrymore. Few actors ever emerged from Broadway, then to radio and finally up onto the silver screen. In one of the more collectible early films was this adventurous tale called " The Mysterious Island " in which he played the Jules Verne character Count Andre Dakkar, which took audiences to that the incredible Isle. In this early and mostly Silent, Black and White film, Barrymore plays a futurist scientist who builds a Undersea craft with which he plans to visit the incredible city of the Undersea people. Jacqueline Gadsden plays his daughter, Countess Sonia Dakkar (Jane Daly) and Nikolai Roget (Lloyd Hughes) her intended. However, the heavy, Baron Hubert Falcon (Montagu Love) has his own plans for her, but needs to capture the strange craft for world conquest. Despite the film being poorly cut and the primitive 'talkie' is plagued with many 'silent' segments, the story is easily carried by the cast. Further, if an audience is Patience and not overly critical, the viewing is enjoyable. Seeing this movie in the light of it being an early entry in the world of films, one can understand why it became a Classic in 1929. ****

Count Andre Dakkar (Lionel Barrymore) considers himself a scientist and rules his island as a benevolent leader. He creates submarines to search for a suspected underwater civilization. His daughter Sonia falls in love with engineer Nicolai Roget. Despotic ruler Baron Falon disapproves of the mixing of the classes. With revolution brewing in the Kingdom of Hetvia, Falon seizes the island and hopes to use the research submarine vessels as weapons. The Count and Sonia face torture. Nicolai returns with the first submarine to rescue them. Under attack, they are forced deeper and deeper until they discover the sea people.

The Jazz Singer was released two years earlier. This is still mostly silent with a few scenes with sound. It's also an early colored film but I didn't see that print. The TCM showing looks black and white. It is loosely adapted from Jules Verne. It faced a long production as film technology started to change. The story is high adventure. There are miniatures, creatures, and midget sea people. It is the fun of simple thrills.