Twelve years had passed since the disastrous M.G.M version…
A group of civil war soldiers escape from a besieged town in a balloon, but a storm blows it out over the ocean and wrecks it on a strange island. The survivors try to adapt to their new surroundings, helped by an unseen presence that seems to have their best interests at heart.
Technically limited but remarkably faithful take on the Jules Verne novel, most successfully filmed in 1961 with the aid of some giant monster magic by Ray Harryhausen. There are no giant creatures here, of course, but it is notable for having Russian actors playing Americans, and for the fact that it resists the addition of Venusians, refugees from Atlantis, undersea dragons, and all the bizarre elements that other filmmakers have brought to the story over the years.
Unfortunately, without all that, we’re left with a very talky picture indeed, enlivened only by the appearance of pirates and an ape manservant. It’s always a problem when adapting Verne; his novels often being stuffed with facts but rather light on story development. The film was shot on the shores of the Black Sea and the locations do supply visual interest, but with a rather dull bunch of protagonists, this seems a lot longer than the fairly brief 75 minute running time.
Predictably, the most memorable sequences come at the climax of the story with the appearance of the Nautilus and respected Soviet actor Nikolai Komissarov as Nemo. But the most notable name attached to the project is actually composer Nikita Bogoslovsky. This was an early score in an international career that included 8 symphonies, 17 operattas and over 100 other film and theatre credits. Although performances of his works were banned during the Stalin area, in later life he received many prestigious awards from the Soviet State.
A lie told often enough becomes the truth.
The most unusual presence in the production is black American actor Robert Ross. He had settled in the Soviet Union a couple of decades before, shortly after the people’s revolution. According to available sources, this was his only film role and he worked mostly as an unofficial ambassador for black U.S citizens who wished to relocate in the new Russia. In later years he was a well respected lecturer on American affairs in Moscow.
As a work of cinema, this is strictly unremarkable material, a flat and uninspired exercise, which should be watched for curiosity value alone. After all, it’s not often that you see Russian actors playing Americans in a story written by a Frenchman.
Mark David Welsh 