20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA: Anniversary Edition Blu-ray (Walt Disney, 1954) Disney Club Exclusive

Proclaimed “the mightiest picture of them all”, Walt Disney’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954) is arguably the rarest anomaly, where marketing hyperbole and the actual film under consideration run parallel courses in artistic distinction. For Walt had poured most every ounce of his studio’s creative genius, and, at $5 million negative cost (not counting the other $4 million needed to make up the general release prints and ad campaigns to sell the picture), nearly every last dollar to produce it. Among its many other merits, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea would be the most expensive movie ever produced in America until that time, even surpassing the cost overruns on Gone with the Wind (1939). The decision to make 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea as a lavishly appointed live-action feature was largely predicated on preliminary sketches and storyboard work done by Production Designer Harper Goff in 1952. Walt had sent Goff off to do some basic research on one of his favorite Jules Verne novels, believing the book would ideally lend itself to his next animated feature. Goff, however, could only envision Verne’s 1870 episodic literary classic one way. And the Colorado-born Goff, who had studied art at L.A.’s prestigious Chouinard Institute before moving to New York to work as an illustrator for Collier's, Esquire and National Geographic, eventually found his true creative niche as a set designer at Warner Bros., his genius seen in that studio’s Captain Blood (1935), Charge of the Light Brigade (1936), Sergeant York (1941), Casablanca (1942), and, The Adventures of Don Juan (1948) – to name but a handful of his credits. Under Walt’s aegis, Goff would oversee the extraordinary conception of Capt. Nemo’s Nautilus submarine for 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, creating a truly original hulking and ‘fish-like’ mass, true to the times in which Verne lived, but also imbued with a spark of fanciful escapism that would captivate, not only audiences, but Walt’s own passion for the work at hand. Aside: as a matter of record, although 20,000 Leagues was nominated – and would win 2 Oscars for Color Art Direction and Visual Effects, Academy bylaws stipulated that only union card-carrying members were eligible for the award. As Goff was not a member, the statuette went to his assistant, John Meehan instead. And although Goff eventually became a union member, the award was not issued to him retroactively; a glaring oversight for one of the finest contributions in art direction ever captured on celluloid.

To state that Walt Disney was intrigued at the prospect of making 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea as his first American-made live-action feature is an understatement. Almost immediately concurring with Goff, and immensely impressed by his story-board concepts, Walt announced in the trades the Disney Studio’s foray into live-action with this spectacularly complex adaptation. It takes a lot to shock Hollywood; but Walt’s chutzpah in venturing forward into ‘legitimate movie art’ created minor tremors within the industry who, until then, had not considered him a ‘real film maker’ and therefore no threat as their competition.  There were two aspects about 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Walt immediately measured as a necessity for it to succeed; first, a clever screenplay to evolve Verne’s episodic vignettes into a multifaceted and intriguing bit of cohesive narrative storytelling; and second, an all-star roster of ‘big name’ talent to helm and sell the picture. But Walt’s most unusual bit of casting was arguably, behind the scenes: director, Richard Fleischer – the son of rival cartoon creator, Max Fleischer. In their early years, the elder Fleischer and Walt had been heated rivals, a disquieting animosity steadily building between the creators of Mickey Mouse and Betty Boop. Despite this, the younger Fleischer’s acceptance to helm 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea met with Max’s approval, who informed his son, “You must do this,” adding “Give Walt a message from me. Tell him he’s getting the best director in the world!”

To some extent, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea could not have come at a worse time for Walt. It behooves one to reconsider that unlike other studios in Hollywood, pumping out approximately 52 pictures per annum, the Disney Company was always dependent on the success of a single animated feature to propel them onto their next project. In the early years, Walt had managed to sustain his company by making cartoon shorts in the interim, and later, military training movies, investing virtually everything he had (including his own life insurance policy) to will Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) off the drawing boards. That gamble paid off handsomely. But from then on, Walt’s key investments became his animated feature films, borrowing money from Bank of America against the prospect of even greater returns; the box office failure of his two subsequent ventures – Fantasia and Pinocchio (both released in 1940) all but bankrupting his company.  Walt’s last mega-hit prior to 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea was Cinderella (1950). Now, nearly two years later, Walt was in a mad scramble against time to recoup his investments on Alice in Wonderland (1951) and Peter Pan (1953); neither having recaptured and bottled the cash register-ringing magic of Cinderella at the box office.

And Walt was also sinking even deeper into the red with cost overruns on his most daring project to date: his California dream park – Disneyland. Ostensibly, he had neither the time nor the money to make 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. And yet, the project was green lit, moving rapidly through the various stages of pre-production; Fleischer bringing in screenwriter, Earl Felton to make sense of Verne’s rather meandering narrative. “I was frankly appalled by the book,” Fleischer would later recall, “There was no story. Just a series of unrelated events. So, I worked with Earl who came up with a brilliant idea – to treat the entire movie as a prison break. Aronnax, Ned and Conseil are Nemo’s prisoners aboard the Nautilus and the whole point of the picture is that they’re trying to escape.”  Meanwhile, Walt convinced four of the biggest names in showbiz to partake in his daring adventure. James Mason had only recently come to the attention of North American audiences, thanks to a string of hit that included The Desert Fox (1951) and A Star is Born (1954). But he was huge box office in the U.K. In the U.S., Kirk Douglas had built a steady list of credentials with breakout performances in Young Man with A Horn (1950) and The Bad and the Beautiful (1952). Walt also handpicked noted theatrical actor, Paul Lukas, who had won an Oscar for his performance in Watch on the Rhine (1943) and Peter Lorre, a beloved character actor with a memorable screen presence, appearing in dozens of movies throughout the 1940s.

While the triumvirate of Mason, Douglas and Lorre clicked almost immediately in their camaraderie on the set, Paul Lukas proved very difficult, even aloof – at one point, threatening lawsuits and taking umbrage to virtually any and all directorial advice Fleischer proposed. “I think what it was, was he was getting older,” Fleischer would later reminisce, “…and struggling in his ability to remember his lines. Here was a man who had been a great actor on the stage, who suddenly realized he no longer possessed a capacity for lengthy memorization. He felt exposed. It upset him. But rather than admit this, he took it out on the rest of us, blaming the screenwriter per say for writing lengthy speeches.” Fleischer would also recall his brief run-in with Kirk Douglas. “Kirk’s a very external actor and sometimes has to be reined in. But his ideas are always to the betterment of the movie.”  On 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Douglas would be called upon to sing, a skill sorely uncultivated. Nevertheless, he embraced the opportunity to try, taking guitar lessons from Harper Goff (who played the banjo in Disneyland’s Dixieland band) to authenticate his performance. When Walt screened the rushed of Douglas salty rendition of ‘A Whale of a Tale’ he immediately announced, to Douglas’ bewildered surprise, a 45 rpm single would be released to help promote the film. Even more astonishing, Douglas’ rendition became a ‘gold record’ top seller.

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea was a monumental undertaking for Walt; the construction of Stage 3 on the back lot, complete with an 18-foot tank of water, expressly built for the production’s climactic – squid attack – full scale and without the benefit of any post-production animated special effects. The Disney backlot would also play host to a series of interior sets, virtually all the Victorian splendor of Capt. Nemo’s Nautilus, including a pipe organ, purchased for a mere $50 at a garage sale and later embellished by Harper Goff. The production grew so vast in scale, Walt eventually extended himself to renting space on the backlots of both 2oth Century-Fox (for the miniature underwater sequences), and Universal-International (for the San Franciscan preamble to this rollicking adventure). Walt also hired celebrated matte artist, Peter Ellenshaw to extend the scope of the visuals with some highly detailed artwork painted on glass, later photographed in perfect register with the live-action elements. Embracing Fox’s patented Cinemascope widescreen process, with prints struck by Technicolor, 20,000 Leagues would become an early beneficiary of this new technology; also, enduring all of its shortcomings. Fleischer would have to shoot the entire movie with only one focal lens; a formidable challenge, requiring multiple, time-consuming setups.

The last bit of inspiration Walt had was to send a second unit to Jamaica to shoot the exhilarating sequence where harpooner, Ned Land (Kirk Douglas) and Conseil (Peter Lorre) are nearly ambushed by cannibals. Employing the locals to partake, the production would also utilize the crystal-clear waters off Nassau, New Providence in the Bahamas to lens 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea’s underwater sequences. As the stars themselves were not required to scuba dive (a term not yet even coined), the execution of these elaborate sequences beneath the ocean waves necessitated the creation of a new kind of aqualung, cleverly concealed beneath Harper Goff’s designs for the wet suits. Divers, Fred Zendar and Al Hansen led a team of 33 men (11 in front of the camera and 22 behind it) to the ocean floor; the cumbersome water-tight diving costumes weighing in at 150 lbs., each ‘actor’ accompanied by two rescue men in the event anything went wrong. On at least one occasion, something did, when the diver/cameraman shooting the ‘shark attack’ sequence swam too close to an actor, puncturing the aqualung’s air supply with the sharp edge of the camera; the rescuers narrowly averting catastrophe by bringing the wounded man back up to the surface. Later, back at the studio, Disney artisans would re-stage close-ups of the stars presumably ‘underwater’ using a ‘dry for wet’ technique photographed against a process screen with ingenious lighting effects to simulate water in the foreground.

To say that the underwater sequences in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea were a marvel, well ahead of their time, is an understatement. Nothing like them had been tried before, and, new techniques had to be devised almost hourly to meet the daily rigors of the sea. Delays were inevitable and costly; the constantly shifting weather patterns in the tropics forcing Fleischer’s second unit to repeatedly stall and, at once point, take refuge from a hellish tropical storm, since the only light source beneath the water was, in fact, sunlight filtering down from on high. When it was discovered any rigorous movement on the ocean floor stirred the silt to such an extent it created a murky and impenetrable fog, Al Hansen came up with the idea of laying heavy hemp carpets beneath the actors’ feet. Nevertheless, the effects produced from these underwater sequences added an uncanny realism. Back at the studio, Walt was facing a challenge even more devastating. The ‘squid sequence’ initially conceived against a vibrant red sunset, was proving an unqualified disaster. The heavy rubber design of the first squid was unwieldy, its bulky tentacles supported by obvious wires dangling overhead that no amount of editing could conceal. The whole sequence, meant to be the climax of the picture, was instead lumbering along like a wounded leviathan, destined to sink the movie.

The final cost for the squid attack on the Nautilus would top out at just under $500,000.00, as Special Effects Director, Robert Mattey’s completely redesigned the squid itself, elongating its tentacles, this time made of a lightweight and more maneuverable rubber and plastic, rigged with spring devices operated by twenty-eight men in the rafters. The decision was also made to shoot the entire confrontation during a violent storm at sea, second unit director, James Curtis ‘Kip’ Havens employing 30 wind machines, fire hoses and dump tanks to drench the set from floor to ceiling. Outside, Stage 3 the over spray from this deluge managed to create foot-deep puddles. Even more perilous, cost overruns on this single sequence now threatened to shut down the production, and, quite possibly, the studio. As he could always be counted upon, Walt took a rough assembly of this footage to Bank of America to plead his case for a loan to finish the picture. Using his formidable talents as a showman, also his backlog of successes for which Bank of America had frequently helped tie up the purse strings and had never – as yet – lost a penny on their investment, the bankers were elated by what they say, cutting Walt a $1 million dollar check to wrap up his movie. For Roy Disney, Walt’s brother in charge of the company’s finances, securing a loan of this magnitude was yet another reprieve in Walt’s on-going struggle to balance his ever-ambitious desires of adding prestige to his studio with the necessities of maintaining the company’s payroll.   

Everything about 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea is impressive; beginning with composer, Paul J. Smith’s bombastic main title music, denoting a twinge of sadness in its epic groundswell of disparate chords; set against a gold lame curtain and flickering titles designed by Albert Whitlock.  From here, we momentarily digress to a leather-bound copy of Jules Verne’s novel, suddenly opening to the first pages of text; Walt’s favorite way to begin any literary adaptation; the text dissolving into a scene of the Nautilus ominously glowing on the surface of the sea and plowing into a long ship traveling in its midst, sinking the vessel to the bottom of the ocean. Another dissolve and we are in San Francisco, circa 1868 (actually shot on the redressed ‘western’ set on the Universal backlot). Rumors of a sea monster are being professed in the public square by ‘Old Billy’ (J.M. Kerrigan), the peg-legged sole survivor of the latest attack. In short order, we are introduced to harpooner, Ned Land (Kirk Douglas), slightly inebriated and accompanied by a pair of harlots he has picked up in town for a good time. Making light of Old Billy’s claim, Ned inadvertently sparks a brawl in the square, arrested along with the others and taken to jail. In the meantime, Professor Pierre M. Aronnax (Paul Lukas) and his assistant, Conseil (Peter Lorre) arrive at the shipping offices, only to be turned away from their proposed trip to Japan yet again. It seems the rumors of the monster have struck fear into hearts of every Captain and crew worth his salt on the open seas. There are no ships leaving port – save one – promoted by U.S. government official, John Howard (Carleton Young).

Having read Aronnax’s misquoted references to the sea monster in the local papers, Howard suggests an expedition of a few months; after that, Aronnax and Conseil may make their crossing to Japan as originally intended. Faced with no alternatives, Aronnax accepts. For several weeks their ship, captained by Farragut (Ted de Corsia), finds no evidence of a sea monster, much to Ned’s chagrin. Ned has, in fact, been hired on a retainer to harpoon the beast and bring it back for evaluation and study. But he will only be paid if the expedition succeeds. Life aboard the schooner is congenial enough, what with Ned entertaining his fellow sailors with ‘A Whale of a Tale’ and engaging in fruitful discussions with Aronnax and Conseil, the latter prone to bouts of sea-sickness. Then, as Farragut is about to call off the expedition, they discover a merchant ship on the horizon suddenly bursting into flames. Making speed to the wreck, Farragut and his crew find no survivors. The Nautilus resurfaces from a distance and charges at them. In the violent confrontation that follows, Farragut’s ship is wounded but not sunk; Aronnax and Ned are cast into the sea by the impact and Conseil dives in to save his traveling companion’s life.

Unable to turn back to save this trio, Farragut gives them up for dead. A short while later, Aronnax and Conseil discover the Nautilus floating nearby, its’ gritty steal hull emerging from a dense fog. They climb aboard the submersible ship. Ned arrives in a lifeboat salvaged from the wreck and together, these three explore the bowels of the vessel; unearthing its vast assortment of Victorian luxuries below deck. Alas, the Nautilus appears to have been abandoned. Aronnax and Conseil witness a burial beneath the sea; Captain Nemo (James Mason) and his crew lay to rest the body of one of their own. But Aronnax, Conseil and Ned are found out and taken hostage by Nemo and his crew. Cruelly, Nemo returns Ned and Conseil to the deck of the Nautilus, a fate that will surely result in their drowning once the submarine slips beneath the ocean waters. However, having read Aronnax’s research, he offers the Professor a chance to remain with him below deck. Nobly, Aronnax instead chooses to die with his friends. As fate would have it, Nemo is fascinated by Aronnax’s self-sacrifice and, after a test of his endurance above the waterline, orders his crew to take all three men below deck. Dining on pickled octopus and other sea-plucked delicacies farmed from the ocean floor, Nemo attempts to explain his philosophy to the new arrivals.

A man on whom great wrongs have been perpetrated, Nemo is now dedicated to the destruction of all man-made implements of war. His flawed altruism, creating a perfect world beneath the sea, is tantamount to the murder of hundreds of innocent sailors. Ned can clearly see the error in Nemo’s mantra. But Aronnax, too consumed by the logistics and science behind Nemo’s mad obsession, elects to side with the Captain of the Nautilus instead; causing a rift in their already tenuous friendship. Nemo allows Aronnax unprecedented access to the inner workings of his ship, revealing its source of power – nuclear fission. In Jules Verne’s original novel, the Nautilus is powered by electricity. In updating the source to nuclear energy, Walt Disney marked his Nautilus as relevant to the, then, contemporary fascination with splitting the atom. Interesting too, was the Disney imagineers’ creation of nuclear fission, seen reflected as spinning color wheels hidden behind a series of inverted clear-plastic salad bowls. The success of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea would inadvertently lead to the U.S. christening its first nuclear-powered submarine the Nautilus, launched in 1959. 

Nemo does not value Ned or Conseil, but keeps them to appease Aronnax. Nemo then takes the Nautilus to a penal colony on Rura Penthe where he reveals his past as a prisoner there. It is from this prison colony that the Nautilus crew is comprised; Nemo, now illustrating his point by ramming a slave ship bound for the colony, destroying its cargo and murdering its crew. Unable to see the wisdom in this, Nemo next challenges Arronax by suggesting his actions have saved thousands from death in war. He also discloses this ‘hated nation’ tortured his wife and son to death in their attempt to force his hand to reveal the secrets of his work to them. Aronnax is sympathetic. But Ned is as defiant as ever and determined still to expose Nemo’s crimes to the world, quietly discovering the coordinates to Nemo’s secret base on the isle of Vulcania, and thereafter tossing messages in bottles into the sea when no one is looking, in the hopes someone from the outside world will come to their rescue.

The Nautilus becomes stranded on a coral reef off the coast of New Guinea. Ned is genuinely surprised when Nemo affords him and Conseil the opportunity to go ashore, ostensibly to collect specimens, as earlier Nemo had been outraged when Ned went in search of sunken treasure beneath the sea. Alas, it is an ominous precursor neither Ned nor Conseil heed, Nemo hoping the pair will be hunted down and killed off by the local cannibals. After several peaceful hours of exploring the island, Ned incurs the wrath of the cannibals. He and Conseil narrowly make it back to the Nautilus, forcing Nemo to apply mild electrocution to its hull to drive the savages away. Nemo feigns being furious with Ned for not obeying his orders. Ned is confined to the brig, befriending Nemo’s pet seal, Esme in his spare time. As a warship approaches, the Nautilus descends to a depth where it cannot be attacked. Alas, it disturbs the lair of a giant squid. Immune to the Nautilus’ electrical charges, the squid takes hold of the submarine and Nemo elects to bring it to the surface, confronting the squid with his men and harpoons. The battle won, the squid destroyed, Nemo, in his own near-death experience, now has a change of heart, desiring to make peace and share his discoveries to make the world a better place for all.

The Nautilus sails for Nemo’s hidden base at Vulcania. Regrettably, having deciphered Ned’s bottled messages beforehand, warships are waiting for an ambush. Ned tries to explain his motives. But Aronnax is furious, realizing Ned’s betrayal has placed Nemo in an impossible position. He will destroy all of his research rather than share it with the world at large. Instructing his crew to detonate bombs all over the island, in the resultant mayhem, Nemo is mortally wounded by gunfire from one of the warships. Carried back to the Nautilus, Nemo instructs his crew to confine Aronnax, Conseil and Ned to their quarters. The Nautilus is heading to the bottom of the sea for the last time where it will moor at its final resting place, killing all on board. Even as the crew side with their captain and prepare to die, Ned breaks free from his cabin and manages to resurface the Nautilus. It strikes a coral reef and begins to take on water; Ned rescuing Aronnax and Conseil from the flooding deluge. Aronnax is unable to retrieve his journal containing a detailed account of their voyage. But as the Nautilus disappears beneath the surface of the water, Nemo’s final words echo from beyond, “There is hope for the future. And when the world is ready for a new and better life, all this will someday come to pass, in God's good time.”  

Sixty-five years after its debut, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea remains a thoroughly impressive achievement – and not just for the Disney Studios. Without question, it is a towering monument to Walt’s impeccable attention to detail, his belief in investing on a project when no one else seemed to think it could remain commercially viable, given its monumental expenditures. The picture is buoyed by some truly ground-breaking special effects; the ingenuity of Walt’s imagineers coming to bear on an exhilarating production of scope and quality unparalleled for its time. Even more impressive, perhaps: the intervening years have not aged the picture at all. It was always intended as a period piece, changing times and tastes powerless to put its ambitious philosophies out of fashion. Critics in 1954 were virtually unanimous in their praise, although continuing to regard Disney’s foray into live-action picture-making as a “joyful exaggeration” in the science-fiction genre, exclusively marketed at kids. And yet, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea is remarkably adult in its central themes and scenarios. Indeed, it is a picture very much made by adults for adults; intensely satisfying in its pacifist’s challenge to the outside world, to settle its differences without provoking perennial conflict among nations.

The technological aspects behind the making of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, while influential in their own time, are not entirely the reason the picture has endured and maintained its reputation so well these many years later. Rather, it is the superb cast; beginning with James Mason’s towering achievement as the ill-fated and self-destructing Capt. Nemo; a man to whom there can be no diplomatic respite above the surface of the ocean. Mason, who could play weak and ineffectual men in the movies like nobody’s business, herein brings a level of caustic and controlling manifest destiny to this multilayered interpretation of a bitter and resolute man of decision. His Nemo is neither demigod nor philanthropist, but a wounded figure, marred by a distinct and grotesque sadness. There is an unsettling Hitlerian quality to Mason’s Nemo, disquietingly brought forth, yet with an undercurrent of genuine humanity buried and/or abandoned within his own suffrage. Nemo’s purposes are not entirely predicated on revenge for the wrongs done to him, and yet he illustrates an almost pathological lack of empathy for the loss of life he inflicts in the name of ‘peace’. Mason’s portrait is most alarming because he has internalized Nemo as a man of great intellect, skill and determination; all positive attributes tragically turned asunder by the character’s powerlessness to reconnect with humanity as anything better than a necessary evil to be eradicated from the earth; or, at the very least, made subservient to his new world order beneath the sea.

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea finally arrives on Blu-ray, albeit, via Disney Inc.’s present short-sightedness to make it a part of their ‘bare bones’ archive release, when a litany of expertly produced extra features already exist in their vaults. One would have thought a cornerstone in Walt’s grandest adventure movies would have taken precedence. But no, 20,000 Leagues was repeatedly delayed from its hi-def debut, rumored because the company had had plans to remake the picture more recently. Mercifully, this never happened. So, now we get this Blu-ray offering. The results, while improving upon the tired old DVD release, are not quite as startling as I had hoped. As the picture was shot in early vintage Cinemascope, the residual softness of the image, especially around the edges of the screen, is understandable. But the Technicolor herein seems to favor a palette that retains the jaundice-yellow flesh tones and favors, rather heavily, the color blue. No, it’s not that artificially leaning blue tint to have afflicted a goodly sum of Fox ‘scope’ back catalog arriving to Blu-ray. And, on occasion, the overall range of hues can be quite beautifully rendered – especially the exteriors shot on location in the Bahamas.  Contrast is adequate and the image does crisp up. But the visuals herein never seem to acquire that added ‘pop’. The 5.1 Dolby Digital is slightly problematic – appearing marginally strident in a few of the early scenes and, overall, lacking the oomph of original 6-track Cinemascope stereo.    

As already mentioned, we lose all of the extras here: the mother-load, starting with Richard Fleischer’s audio commentary, both comprehensive and interesting. Also lost, the real goodies; a nearly hour long ‘making of’, includes new and vintage interviews and a ton of unearthed behind-the-scenes footage. Bye-bye also, to extensive featurettes on Jules Verne, the Humbolt Squid, a tour of the Nautilus, some vintage junkets on ‘monsters’ of the deep, 3 cartoon shorts, an extensive gallery of stills, trims and storyboard to screen comparisons; plus, the original theatrical trailer. Why Disney Inc. continues to deny its fans these spectacular extras already available on the DVD is beyond me – especially since they continue to market their live-action catalog as ‘exclusive’ Disney Club offerings. Dumb marketing decision. Really dumb! Bottom line: 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea has finally made the leap to hi-def home video. It’s a competent offering, without ever reaching the spectacular heights. Frankly, for something billed as an ‘anniversary edition’ I expected a lot more! Recommended, I suppose, merely as an upgrade from the DVD. Just keep your second disc of extras from that old release, and also the DVD for Fleischer’s audio commentary.

FILM RATING (out of 5 - 5 being the best)

5+

VIDEO/AUDIO

4

EXTRAS

0