The Mysterious Island
About The Mysterious Island
Count Dakkar rules a volcanic island near Hetvia and has done away with class lines among the people there. With his sister Sonia and her fiancé, the engineer Nicolai Roget, he has built a submarine. Roget takes it out on the first dive just as Baron Falon overruns the island. Falon follows in a second boat. On the ocean floor the two craft find dragons, a giant squid, and a humanoid people no one has recorded.
Cast & crew
More about The Mysterious Island
Lucien Hubbard directed the release version, using footage Maurice Tourneur and Benjamin Christensen had shot in 1927. Production had started in 1926. Lucien Hubbard and Carl Pierson wrote it from Jules Verne's 1874 novel. MGM released this part-talkie on October 5, 1929. It is photographed mostly in two-color Technicolor, with a black-and-white stretch, and carries a Western Electric sound-on-film track of dialogue, music, and effects. Wikipedia gives a budget of $1,130,000. Running times on record are 95 minutes, 93 for a Turner library print, and 67 for a restored cut. Lionel Barrymore plays Dakkar. Jacqueline Gadsden plays Sonia. Lloyd Hughes plays Roget. Montagu Love plays Falon. John Ernest Williamson shot underwater scenes in his submarine tube. That footage was not used.
Themes
Making
The picture sat in production from 1926 to 1929. Hubbard finished it by cutting in Tourneur's and Christensen's earlier footage and adding talk.
Look
Most of the release is two-color Technicolor. The underwater material Williamson shot in the submarine tube did not make the final cut.
Technique
A two-color Technicolor part-talkie, finished after three years and three directors.
Music
Western Electric recorded the talking passages, the score, and the effects.
Preservation
A 93-minute Turner library print and a 67-minute restoration are both on record, along with a Technicolor version.
Notes
- Percy Hilburn is credited as the French cinematographer on the Wikipedia infobox. James Basevi is also on the camera lists. Martin Broones and Art Lange are credited with music. William Axt appears on some composer lists.
- Williamson built the tube for undersea filming and then saw the shots left out of the finished picture.
- Harry Gribbon, Pauline Starke, Angelo Rossitto, and Gibson Gowland are in the cast lists.
- A black-and-white copy and a Technicolor copy both circulate. One is on Wikimedia Commons.
Scenes
- Roget dives as Falon's men take the island.
- The two submarines meet dragons and a giant squid on the bottom.
Influenced by
- Jules Verne's The Mysterious Island (1874)
