20,000 Leagues Under the Sea

The Jules Verne classic, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, had sat on my bookshelf a long time and I'm not sure how it got there but one day I opened it up to see if it was worthy of being considered an early sci-fi classic. Quite some time later, and thanks to Covid for keeping me locked in my room so that I might finally read the last chapters, I finally finished it and I wasn't sure how Hollywood would adapt 150 something year old novel into a swashbuckling adventure but they did 70 years ago with director Richard Fleischer at the helm.

The story is set in the 1860s where ships are being destroyed at sea by a mysterious monster all around the world, and so an American ship sets course to kill the beast. French Professor Pierre Aronnax and his servant, Conseil, are invited to join the expedition where they meet a charismatic harpooner, Ned Land. But during the hunt, the three all fall overboard and find themselves taking shelter on what is not a sea beast at all but a highly advanced submarine, commanded by Captain Nemo.

Released in early 1954 by Walt Disney, Fleischer's adventure boasts excellent production design and remains a highly impressive film for its visual spectacle alone but the real highlight of the film, for me, is James Mason's Captain Nemo. Mason perfectly brings the complex and tortured soul from Verne's writing to life, and I was pleasantly surprised to see how much of Aronnax and Nemo's philosophical conversations made it to the screen. 

There are of course some differences between the book and film, most notably being how the central character is Ned Land while Professor Aronnax is moved to the background in favour of Land and Nemo, who are more interesting here. In the book, Aronnax was a clear surrogate for the audience and faithful adaptation might have proven to be a bit too dry for what is clearly meant to be a child-friendly adventure from Disney. Paul Lukas still plays his part well as the stuffy professor but it's Mason's Nemo, Kirk Douglas' Ned and Peter Lorre's Conseil who fair better with their characters having more agency. 

The book still has plenty of highlights for me and I'm glad I read it but for anyone in search of a fun adventure, Fleischer's adaptation offers a far more succinct and enjoyably paced experience. It's not perfect and will seem creaky in a few areas but the talented cast and fun action sequences will be more than enough to keep anyone interested entertained for two hours.