The Fabulous World of Jules Verne

The Fabulous World of Jules Verne

Original Czech film poster
Directed by Karel Zeman
Produced by Zdeněk Novák
Written by
Based on Facing the Flag 
by Jules Verne
Starring
Music by Zdeněk Liška
Cinematography
  • Jiří Tarantík
  • Bohuslav Pikhart
  • Antonín Horák
Edited by Zdeněk Stehlík
Distributed by
Release dates
  • 1958 (1958)
Running time
 83 minutes
Country Czechoslovakia
Language Czech

The Fabulous World of Jules Verne (Czech: Vynález zkázy, literally The Deadly Invention or An Invention for Destruction) is a 1958 Czechoslovak adventure film directed by Karel Zeman. Based on several works by Jules Verne, primarily his 1896 novel Facing the Flag, the film evokes the original illustrations for Verne's works by combining live actors with various forms of animation.

Plot

A gang of pirates kidnap a scientist and two others to get the secret of the scientist's futuristic weapon for their piracy.

Cast

Production

Sources

Karel Zeman, a Czech film director and animator, was deeply influenced by the novels of Jules Verne, making four feature films between 1955 and 1970 drawing extensively on Verne's Voyages Extraordinaires series.[1] The first of these, Journey to the Beginning of Time, was inspired by Journey to the Center of the Earth and featured a scene in which its heroes directly acknowledged their fondness for reading Verne. The second of Zeman's Verne-based films was Vynález zkázy; the later ones were The Stolen Airship, based on Two Years' Vacation, and On the Comet, based on Hector Servadac.[1]

The main literary source material for Vynález zkázy was Verne's 1896 novel Facing the Flag. Zeman also drew on themes and concepts from other Verne novels; for example, the undersea sequences include references to Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, and the aircraft Albatross from Robur the Conqueror also makes an appearance.[2] (Another Verne novel, The Mysterious Island, may also have supplied some details.)[3] Rather than a straightforward literal adaptation of Facing the Flag, Zeman conceived the film as if the story had been rewritten by one of the book's characters, the young engineer Simon Hart. The presence within Facing the Flag of many memorable Vernian motifs—including submarines, volcanoes, mysterious figures in possession of powerful technologies, and other themes and ideas—facilitated Zeman's process of letting elements of other Verne novels shape the adaptation.[1]

The film also pays tribute to the style of the pioneering early filmmaker Georges Méliès.[4] Zeman likely saw Méliès's work at the Czech National Film Archive in Prague, where hand-colored prints were available of The Impossible Voyage (1904), The Witch (1906), and The Diabolic Tenant (1909). Zeman freely used details from Méliès's style as inspiration; for example, the piston-powered steam engine and submarine in Vynález zkázy are creatively adapted variants of those in The Impossible Voyage.[1] Other possible cinematic sources include Fritz Lang's 1927 film Metropolis, Sergei Eisenstein's 1925 film Battleship Potemkin, and possibly even Stuart Paton's 1916 version of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.[1]

Style

"Back-Cup Island": one of several Léon Benett engravings faithfully recreated in the film

The film has long been noted for its unique visual style, which faithfully recreates that of the Victorian line engravings (by Édouard Riou, Léon Benett, and others) featured in the original editions of Verne's novels.[5] According to Karel Zeman's daughter Ludmila Zeman: "As a child, I remember I had all the books with those beautiful engravings. I really can't visualize the story any other way. And my father felt, because he adored Verne, he believed it can only be a good telling if he used the same techniques."[6]

Much of this style was created in-camera, thanks to the production design for the film. Zeman's crew made and used hard rubber paint rollers to add engraving-like hatching to scenery and costumes.[6] (In a review of the film, Pauline Kael noted that "there are more stripes, more patterns on the clothing, the decor, and on the image itself than a sane person can easily imagine.")[5] To complete the effect, Zeman and his crew composited the film with various forms of animation, including traditional, cut-out, and stop-motion varieties, along with miniature effects and matte paintings, all designed to keep the engraving style seamlessly consistent.[7] Even stock footage clips—birds, sea waves, and other details—were adapted for the effect by printing the film with lined filters and matted-in sky backgrounds.[2]

Music

The film's score was written by Zdeněk Liška, a highly regarded film composer known for his skill with musical characterizations and humor, as well as for his innovative use of electronic music techniques.[8] In the mid-twentieth century, he was the foremost Czech composer of fantasy film scores.[9] The score is written in an old-fashioned style complementing the quaintness of the visuals. The main theme, reminiscent of a music box, is scored for harpsichord, accompanied by a chamber ensemble of string instruments and woodwinds. The love theme, apparently based on the song "Tit-willow" from the Gilbert and Sullivan comic opera The Mikado, is likewise played by woodwinds and a muted harpsichord.[9] Liška's score also includes various shorter cues, such as a short pathos-filled theme for the sinking of the ship Amelie, keyboard strikes matching the attacks on the giant octopus, and a serene finale for string orchestra.[9] The film's score remains one of Liška's most notable works.[8][9]

Themes

Vynález zkázy treats the scientific themes of Jules Verne's novels with gently satiric affection, implicitly praising Verne's style while deliberately pointing up the quaintness of the science involved.[2] In an interview, Ludmila Zeman summed up the film's themes, saying that Verne "always warned that even if the future is technologically perfect with all these mod cons, it needs love, it needs poetry, it needs magic. He believed only these can make people feel happy and loved."[6]

Release and reception

Reynold Brown film poster for the American release, with the new title and advertising style

Vynález zkázy premiered in Czechoslovakia on 22 August 1958,[10] and was featured at Expo 58 in Brussels, where it won the Grand Prix at the International Film Festival.[11] Over the following year, the film also garnered a Silver Sombrero at the First International Film Festival in Guadalajara, a Czechoslovak Film Critics Award, a Crystal Star from the French Academy of Film, and other awards.[12] In France, André Bazin praised the film in Cahiers du cinéma, and Paul Louis Thirard reviewed it warmly in Positif. The director Alain Resnais named it as one of the ten best films of the year.[3] In 2010, a publication of the Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs estimated Vynález zkázy as the most successful film in the history of Czech cinema.[13]

The film was brought to the United States in 1961 by the American entrepreneur Joseph E. Levine, who had it dubbed into English, christened The Fabulous World of Jules Verne, and released by Warner Bros. Pictures as part of a double feature for children paired with Bimbo the Great.[14] In this release, many of the cast and crew were billed with anglicized names; for example, Lubor Tokoš, Arnošt Navrátil, and Miloslav Holub were credited as Louis Tock, Ernest Navara, and Milo Holl, respectively.[15] The American release also added an introductory segment hosted by the television presenter Hugh Downs.[16]

Following the American release, the film won several additional high-profile admirers. The New York Times critic Howard Thompson found it "fresh, funny and highly imaginative," with "a marvelous eyeful of trick effects."[17] Pauline Kael was similarly glowing, calling the film a "wonderful giddy science fantasy" and adding that Zeman "sustains the Victorian tone, with its delight in the magic of science, that makes Verne seem so playfully archaic."[5] Charles Stinson of the Los Angeles Times began a highly positive review for the film by saying: "The Fabulous World of Jules Verne is precisely that. For once the title writers and the press agents have been found failing to exaggerate. They'd better watch it."[18] Thanks to the American release, the film was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation in 1962.[19] However, the film was not a box-office success in America, where the well-established Hollywood science fiction film tradition had led audiences to expect heightened realism rather than Zeman's deliberately stylized approach.[2]

Bill Warren, in a 1982 encyclopedia of 1950s science fiction films, wrote that Vynález zkázy was "the best film covered in this book" as well as "the best movie ever adapted from a work by Verne."[2] In 2010, a commentator for Experimental Conversations said that the film "must stand alongside [The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari] as one of the great visual and stylistic triumphs of the cinematic medium" and that Zeman's process "really does need to be seen to be believed."[7] In 2011, the science fiction writer John C. Wright identified Vynález zkázy as the first steampunk work and Zeman as the inventor of that genre, commenting that if the film "is not the steam-powered Holy Grail of Steampunkishness, it surely ought to be."[20]

The film was screened by the Museum of Modern Art in December 2012 as part of the exhibition An Auteurist History of Film. MoMA's film curator Charles Silver called the film "a bubbling over […] of unprecedented imagination" with "an undeniably poetic fairy-tale quality."[21] It was screened again in New York City in August 2014 by the Film Society of Lincoln Center, as part of the series "Strange Lands: International Sci-Fi." In The Village Voice, Alan Scherstuhl commented that "The handmade dazzlements still dazzle today … Could it be that old special effects, dependent upon camera tricks and theatrical invention, stir something sympathetic in us that glossy pixels do not, inviting us not just to dream along with the fantasy but also the painstaking creation thereof?"[22]

In 2014, the Karel Zeman Museum in Prague announced that they, in collaboration with České bijáky and Czech TV, had begun a complete digital restoration of the film, planned to be premiered at Expo 2015 in Italy.[23]

See also

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 Kawa-Topor, Xavier (2015), "Karel Zeman et Jules Verne : Le cinéma pour île mystérieuse", Karel Zeman: Le Méliès tchèque, Malavida Films, pp. 4–9
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 Warren, Bill (2010). Keep Watching the Skies!: American Science Fiction Movies of the Fifties. Jefferson, NC: McFarland. pp. 256–61.
  3. 1 2 Bourget, Jean-Loup (June 2000), "Le chaînon manquant: Karel Zeman ressuscité", Positif (472): 98–100
  4. ↑ Sadoul, Georges; Morris, Peter (1972). Dictionary of Films. Berkeley: University of California Press. p. 410.
  5. 1 2 3 Kael, Pauline (1991). 5001 Nights at the Movies. New York: Holt. p. 179. ISBN 0-8050-1367-9.
  6. 1 2 3 Proč Karel Zeman film natočil [Why Zeman Made the Film] (featurette). Prague: Karel Zeman Museum. Nov 6, 2012.
  7. 1 2 Barrett, Alex (Winter 2010). "The Fabulous World of Jules Verne". Experimental Conversations (6). Retrieved 3 July 2015.
  8. 1 2 Gardavský, Čeněk (1965), Contemporary Czechoslovak Composers, Prague: Panton, pp. 280–281
  9. 1 2 3 4 Larson, Randall D. (1985), Musique Fantastique: A Survey of Film Music in the Fantastic Cinema, Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, p. 216
  10. ↑ "Vynález zkázy (1958)". kinobox.cz.
  11. ↑ Pišťanek, Peter (2009-09-17). "Karel Zeman Génius animovaného filmu". SME. Retrieved 1 February 2012.
  12. ↑ Karel Zeman filmography
  13. ↑ Hubálková, Petra (23 September 2010). "Czech film production for children". Czech.cz. Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Czech Republic). Retrieved 18 July 2015.
  14. ↑ "A Strange Introduction to Karel Zeman". TCM Movie Morlocks. TCM. Retrieved 2 February 2012.
  15. ↑ American Film Institute (1971), The American Film Institute Catalog of Motion Pictures Produced in the United States: Feature Films, 1961–1970, Berkeley: University of California Press, p. 318
  16. ↑ Maltin, Leonard (2008), Leonard Maltin's 2009 Movie Guide, New York: Plume/Penguin, p. 431
  17. ↑ Thompson, Howard (29 June 1961). "Screen: 2 From Abroad: 'World of Jules Verne' and 'Bimbo the Great'". The New York Times. Retrieved 2 February 2012.
  18. ↑ Stinson, Charles (22 September 1961). "'World of Jules Verne' Archaic Yet Prophetic". Los Angeles Times: A10.
  19. ↑ "1962 Hugo Awards". The Hugo Awards. World Science Fiction Society. Retrieved 6 February 2013.
  20. ↑ Wright, John C. (19 February 2011). "Steampunk is a Diabolical Czech Invention". John C. Wright's Journal. Retrieved 1 February 2015.
  21. ↑ Silver, Charles (4 December 2012). "Karel Zeman's The Fabulous World of Jules Verne". Inside/Out. MoMA. Retrieved 11 April 2013.
  22. ↑ Scherstuhl, Alan (20 August 2014), "The "Strange Land: International Sci-Fi" Series Boasts Handmade Wonders", The Village Voice, retrieved 27 August 2014
  23. ↑ Velinger, Jan (25 July 2014), "Karel Zeman Museum offers special programmes in summer", Radio Prague, retrieved 27 August 2014

External links

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