20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
“The first submarine photoplay ever filmed”
About 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
The U.S. Navy sends the Abraham Lincoln after a sea monster. The monster is Captain Nemo's submarine Nautilus. Nemo takes aboard harpooner Ned Land, Professor Pierre Aronnax, Aronnax's daughter, and the professor's assistant, and shows them the ocean floor. On a nearby island, survivors of a runaway Union Army balloon find a girl living alone. Charles Denver's yacht arrives; years earlier, as a colonial officer in India, he attacked Princess Daaker, who killed herself, and he abandoned her child on that island. Nemo, who is Prince Daaker, torpedoes the yacht, saves the girl, recognizes her as his daughter, and dies. The crew buries him on the sea bottom and leaves the Nautilus adrift.
Cast & crew
More about 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
Stuart Paton directed and wrote the script for Carl Laemmle, drawing on Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas and The Mysterious Island. The Williamsons spent about two years on the picture. A full-size Nautilus mock-up could move on the surface. Universal released it on December 24, 1916.
Themes
Background
The film opened in 1916, while German U-boats were already a war story in American newspapers, and it put a civilian revenge submarine on screen beside that news.
Making
John Ernest Williamson built a photosphere, a steel globe about six by ten feet, and linked it to a boat by a tube. Mirrors and watertight shafts let Eugene Gaudio's camera record reflected images in sunlit Bahamian shallows. No modern underwater camera was used.
Reviews
Hal Erickson later wrote that the cost was so high the film could not turn a profit, and that no further Jules Verne adaptation followed for twelve years.
Look
Eugene Gaudio is the credited cinematographer. The undersea footage was made through J. E. Williamson's photosphere in the Bahamas, including a fight with an octopus in shallow, sunlit water.
Technique
Trade advertising called it the first feature filmed underwater. The trick was a submerged viewing chamber and mirrors, plus a navigable surface mock-up of the Nautilus.
Music
Silent on release. Stephin Merritt wrote a score performed live with the film at the Castro Theatre on May 4, 2010.
Preservation
Prints survive. In 2016 the Library of Congress selected the film for the National Film Registry.
Notes
- Allen Holubar plays Nemo. William Welsh plays Charles Denver, Jane Gail the girl on the island, Dan Hanlon Professor Aronnax, Edna Pendleton his daughter, Curtis Benton Ned Land, and Matt Moore Lieutenant Bond.
- An opening title credits the Williamson brothers with undersea photography.
- The octopus fight was staged in shallow water and shot from inside a steel chamber, not with a camera swimming free.
- The Library of Congress placed the film on the National Film Registry in 2016.
- On May 4, 2010, Stephin Merritt's new score was played live with a print at the Castro Theatre during the San Francisco International Film Festival.
Scenes
- The Abraham Lincoln rams what the crew thinks is a monster and four people are taken aboard the Nautilus.
- Nemo's party hunts on the seafloor while fish pass the photosphere.
- The Nautilus torpedoes Denver's yacht.
- Nemo's crew buries him on the ocean floor and sets the submarine adrift.
Influenced by
- Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas (1870)
- Jules Verne's The Mysterious Island (1875)
Also available
- Internet Archive (20000LeaguesUndertheSea)
