L'île mystérieuse

I am a history teacher and sometimes use films to discuss American history. In particular, we discuss and learn about the earliest films and historically important films. While some of these films are just brief little snippets (like the very early Edison films) and some are extremely dated and dull by today's standards (THE JAZZ SINGER comes to mind), some of the films we discuss have aged very well and are still great entertainment. One such important but still entertaining early films is THE MYSTERIOUS ISLAND. It was intended as a silent film, but with the success of "talkies", the studio decided to add dialog and very loud sound effects to this very early sci-fi film taken from the Jules Verne novel. At times, the sound works very well--such as in the beginning when there is a lot of dialog (provided the record of the sounds was timed perfectly--fortunately on video and DVD this isn't a problem). At other times, it looks like a silent movie with a few tacked on sounds (similar to what happened with Harold Lloyd's WELCOME DANGER). However, despite this "hybrid" nature of the film, it is still very entertaining--and a lot of fun to see sci-fi done in the old fashioned way. The undersea sequences are of course dated, but not really that bad for 1929--in fact, I found them to be pretty charming. An interesting and entertaining film even today with a good performance from the great Lionel Barrymore.

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.

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.

THE MYSTERIOUS ISLAND is a mixed silent / "talkie" film about Count Dakkar (Lionel Barrymore) and his visionary creation of early submarine technology. He wants to explore the ocean floor in order to find a race of deep-sea humanoids. Unfortunately, Dakkar makes the mistake of letting the ruthless Baron Falon (Montagu Love) in on his plans. Falon has big plans of his own for Dakkar's invention, none of them good.

For it's time, this movie has incredible special effects, including the army of fish-men superimposed with a "giant" octopus and a caiman as a finned, aquatic "dinosaur". The miniature work is also amazing, as are the bulbous diving suits during the finale.

An exciting, highly entertaining sci-fi / adventure film from beginning to end...

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.