20,000 Leagues Under the Sea

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1916) was a movie of firsts. It was the first feature length adaptation of Jules Vernes classic and was also the very first movie to film underwater.

Alas the troubles of this silent movie became apparent quite early on, namely that it's not exactly loyal to the source material. If you're expecting something strongly resembling the book then this may be an adaptation worth skipping over.

Now as mentioned this is a silent film (Entirely even devoid of music) which I'll be honest I've never liked. It's not anything snobbish or any expectations that I impose on a film, it's more that sitting for 90 minutes odd in silence gives me a migraine.

For this reason I watched this in sections and when the credits rolled I still managed to acquire a migraine and wasn't overly impressed with what I saw.

Considering it's age the majority looks fantastic as does the underwater filming. Certain parts struggle and it's unclear everything that is taking place but thankfully unlike 1907's version they are few and far between.

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea is a passable attempt at a grandiose tale and the first of many many adaptations.

The Good:

Revolutionary for its time

The Bad:

Something about silent film gives me a headache

Not loyal to the original book

This film combines plot elements of Verne's original 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and Mysterious Island, then adds its own subplot involving the origin of Captain Nemo that ties everything together. I was very impressed by the writing. This was the first major film with underwater photography. The set design was impressive. I found the diving suits to be particularly interesting--essentially early versions of scuba gear. The new score fit very well into the story. All in all, a wonderful and landmark achievement in filmmaking.

This may have been thrilling in 1916, but today it seems more of a curio. The Williamson brothers invented a camera to take pictures underwater, (the prologue tells us, complete with photos of them) so there's lots of shots of fish swimming, the bottom of the sea, men in diving suits and one battle with an octopus, which was a bit fuzzy. Still, the sense of watching movie history was strong, but don't expect too much in light of more modern techniques. What really bothered me was the hammy acting styles, with lots of arm motions and exaggerated facial features. It's the style that gave silent films a bad name. One who avoided this was Matt Moore, the hero of the film, and the only actor I recognized. Perhaps that is why he was still making movies in the 50's. The film uses plot elements of Verne's "The Mysterious Island" as well as "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea."

This early adaptation of "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" is interesting, and generally entertaining, though it lacks the depth of the original story. Its strengths are the underwater effects, the settings, and the camera work, which at times are remarkable for the era. On the other hand, it makes little attempt to convey the most important themes of Verne's story, settling instead for straightforward adventure and melodrama, which are much easier to film.

One can only guess how exciting it might have been in 1916 to see some of these images and special effects. Only occasionally does it falter a bit and lose the illusion of reality for a short time; otherwise it is quite convincing. Just seeing the underwater photography alone must have been pretty impressive at the time, and they also managed to get some interesting sea creatures on film. The photography itself is pretty good throughout the movie, and some of the props and settings are nicely done.

The story draws rather freely both from "20,000 Leagues ... " and also from another Verne story, "Mysterious Island". It is a mostly entertaining yarn, full of action and with some unexpected developments. But only a small portion of Verne's scientific vision comes across, and none of the depth of the characters and of their interactions has been preserved. Captain Nemo is one of literature's more complex and thought-provoking characters, but here he becomes more of a stock melodrama figure. Professor Arronax and Ned Land are mostly spectators, rather than providing worthy foils for the mad genius Nemo.

It's by no means a bad movie, and if you are a silent film fan and/or are interested in film history, there should be enough here to make it worth watching. But otherwise, the 1950's Disney version does a much better job of filming the profound vision and philosophical conflict found in Verne's original novel.

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!