20,000 Leagues Under the Sea :: Education by Design Store

Customer Reviews

An authentic 1916 film, collectable, video taped to DVD.

2003-01-23
This is a classic, first of its kind film. The special effects include some of the FIRST underwater motion film ever made. There is no dialoged sound track, a pianist accompanies the black&white (sometimes brown& white) images while occasional subtitles elude to the drama as it unfolds. The image bobs and weaves like a video camera was held in front of a screen showing the celluloid film to make this into DVD. A tripod would have helped.
If you must have any and all submarine movies, or are collecting samples of cutting edge effects before the era of synchronized sound, then this DVD is for you. If you're looking for the "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" where the squid wraps around the sub in full color & sound, then I think the Disney version is the one you want. I'll keep both versions!

Bait and Switch

2002-03-06
Apparently, the man who made this movie had not read the book, nor did he have any friends who read the book. The movie is only interesting as an old example of how movie makers use a popular title to attract viewers. The movie is not even well constructed. It has a number of inconsistences and rough points in its flow that could easily have been corrected.

A Great Classic

2001-11-04
For the time, the special effects in this movie are great. This is a great family film. To realize that this story was writen long before there was a submarine let alone a nucler powered sub is amazing.

In a time of sail ships and steam powered ships, A brilent man that has escaped from slavery with a loyal bunch, discovers the power of the atom, and builds an atomic submarine. along with his loyal crew he now targets the poducts that come from slavery, and trys to sink every ship that carries cargo from slaves. his sub seems to the world to be a sea creature attacking ships and is hunted. because of his curcumstances, captin Nemo belives that humanity is doomed and refuses to have any pitty for anyone, and at any cost he knows he must never let anyone know about the atom because of it's great destructive power. Disney introduces a comic part to this movie, and takes a fun loving sailor and strands him with captin Nemo. The movie is done very well.

Classic Jules Verne 2000-07-31
This version of Jules Verne's classic is unique in so far as it concentrates upon the character of Captain Nemo, providing considerable material on his background, most of which has been neglected in subsequent adaptations. The groundbreaking underwater photography is still amongst the best on film. This print is a little scratched in places, but on the whole it's still an excellent copy. The color tinting effectively sets the atmosphere for each scene, and an appropriate musical score in Dolby Digital Stereo adds tremendously to the viewing experience. I highly recommend this DVD to any connoisseur of early cinema.

Excellent 2000-04-04
I love this movie a lot. It is so great.

Spectacular for its time 2007-09-10
With all famous, classic stories which have been remade several times over the decades, it can be difficult not to compare one version with the other, especially when one of them was made in the middle of the silent film era. So it's important to keep in mind that this early 1916 version of Jules Verne's classic was a state-of-the-art superior production at that time, complete with exciting battle scenes, special effects and even the first real underwater photography. The film even opens with a credit to the two inventors of the new underwater camera, as well as a suitable little tribute to Jules Verne's amazing foresight as he described submarines and other futuristic things half a century before they were invented. Keeping all this mind, viewing this silent version of "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" becomes a whole new adventure, and even though the underwater shots, old-fashioned diving suits and short battle scenes are humdrum for us today, they are still of good quality even by today's standards, and must have been an exciting spectacle for audiences back in 1916.

While not entirely faithful to Verne's original, the story is quite interesting and involves far more than just showing off the technology of the period with many underwater and submarine scenes. In fact, for a 1916 production, this film is particularly sophisticated on various levels, and with careful editing the lives of three different groups of people are related, leading to a climax which shows how all their paths cross and how they are connected. There is Captain Nemo with his mysterious quest for revenge, some balloonists who become stranded on an island where a wild girl lives, and then the man plagued by a guilty conscience who returns to this island in search of the girl. Besides some intriguing plots and drama, there is some good action (by 1916 standards, that is) including a diver wrestling a giant octopus. Together with a newly-made musical score of both piano on its own at times, then other instruments, the overall effect is of an interesting film with much variety, quite apart from its historic significance as being a pioneer of underwater photography and other exciting action effects of its time.

A story within a story within a story 2006-06-19
Prince Daaker AKA Captain Nemo has searched 20,000 leagues under the sea for revenge. The daughter of Prince Daaker (Lois Alexander) was abducted. Prof. Aronnax (Dan Hanlon) is invited by the US navy to track sown a sea monster that is interrupting shopping. He takes his daughter (Edna Pendleton). A balloon is blown off course and carries four men to the south pacific. An evil yacht owner looks for a girl from his past. All of these stories and the story of a Child of Nature in a chic leopard skin outfit will converge on a mysterious island for the final scenario.

We find this version of 20000 Leagues Under the Sea quite different from the Disney version. The special effects are more vantage and they spend more time explaining how the physics of the underwater suits, crystal "magic window", and underwater guns, work.

There are a few things that one must take in account for the times. Nemo looks like a goat herder. The giant octopus looks much more like the octopus in the John Wayne move Wake of the Red Witch. The underwater guns look like Winchester lever action. Where did the Child of Nature get her leopard skin? How did Nemo obtain his technology? Not the most plausible story.

There is also a long long under water filler scene. However there is excellent underwater photography by the brothers George and Ernest Williamson.

Other than that is fun to watch.

An interesting piece of history but not much of a movie 2006-05-01
The 1916 version of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea was a landmark in special effects in its day, but 90 years on it's a mere historical curiosity. It's not that it's particularly bad, more that it's very flatly directed even for its day and the passage of time has dealt it some particularly low blows. Although in the first draft of the novel Nemo was clearly identified as a Pole waging a private war with Russia before Verne's publishers and the French censors objected, the film goes off on its own to make him a wronged Indian Prince (Allen Holubar) with a penchant for wearing Santa Claus suits: the fact that his crew alternately seem to be dressed as elves or pastry chefs does not help matters much. Then there's his long-lost daughter, introduced as a `child of nature' skipping and dancing through the jungle in so insipid a manner that she even scares off the cheetahs. Looking like a cross between a young Bette Midler playing Elmo Lincoln in blackface and Spike Milligan playing Little Eva while being poked with a cattle prod, Jane Gail's performance is every negative clich? about silent movie acting incarnate. Little of Verne's episodic plot remains: having introduced Professor Aronnax and Ned Land, the hunting trip aside, the film promptly ignores them for the rest of its running time in favor of a plot drawn loosely from Verne's other Nemo novel, Mysterious Island. Still, it's watchable enough even if it doesn't give Richard Fleischer's 1954 version much of a run for its money.

There have been better movies. 2004-12-26
Although there are indeed historical aspects to this picture, on the whole, it's a bit dull and lame. It bears very little resemblance to Jules Verne's story, and later versions were better. Those who grew up with the 1950's Disney version, or later Sci-Fi channel remake, will be disappointed, and will not recognize much of the plot line...such as it is.

Recommended as a Historic Artifact, But Nothing More 2003-10-10
The 1916 version of 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA is a perfect example of what can happen when a film relies primarily on special effects. In its day, it was widely celebrated as one of the first feature-length films to make use of underwater photography, and audiences thrilled to its scenes of coral reefs and sharks. But nowadays we're very used to seeing underwater photography, and of a quality that far surpasses that seen here. And the film has little else to offer.

The story, of course, is based on the Jules Verne classic--but "based" is the operative word. About the only thing this film version has in common with the Verne novel is the title, a few character names, and a few basic concepts, so if you're expecting a faithful silent adaptation of the novel you're outta luck. In this version, a scientist (Dan Hanlon) and his party go in search of sea monsters and run afoul of the Nautilus, but they soon discover that Capt. Nemo (Allen Holubar) really isn't such a bad guy after all. There's a subplot about a "child of nature" (Jane Gail) who lives on a "Mysterious Island" and who has some mixed experiences with shipwrecked sailors stranded there--and before the whole thing ends we are flashed back to colonial India for an explanation of just who Capt. Nemo really is and how he got that way. In the process there is underwater photography aplenty, including a faintly hilarious attack on a sailor by a 1916 special-effects-octopus.

The acting is extremely broad here, even for 1916, and Nemo's costume makes him look rather like a skinny Santa Claus gone bad. The Nautilus is uninspired and the cinematography is only so-so. Consequently, what audiences thrilled over in 1916 seems pretty clunky today. The film has not been well-reserved, nor has any attempt been made to restore it, and there isn't a single scene that isn't riddled with artifacts. This is really a film for die-hard silent film buffs rather than casual viewers, and even silent film buffs will probably find themselves hitting the fast forward more than a couple of times. Recommended as a historic artifact, but nothing more.

GFT, Amazon Reviewer