WORLD TOUR Day 64 - Victory Lap!
BEFORE: It's always a big day here at Honky's Movie Year when we hit a century mark, but it's also the LAST film of the year before I close up shop for the holiday season, AND it's an Oscar winner to boot. (Wrap-up on the year's stats to follow) But was it truly the BEST Picture of 1956, or just the biggest?
Linking from "The Lady from Shanghai", Orson Welles was also in "Touch of Evil" with Marlene Dietrich, who makes a cameo in this film too.
THE PLOT: Adaptation of Jules Verne's novel about a Victorian Englishman who bets that with the new steamships and railways he can go...well, you figure it out.
AFTER: This film (and the novel it's based on) take place at a very particular time in history - after the Industrial Revolution, which makes the journey possible, but before faster methods of travel, such as airplanes and high-speed trains, which makes the journey a challenge. Both elements have to be present - the possibility and the difficulty - for this to be intriguing. We want our heroes to succeed, but we also want to see them struggle. The opening narration of the film tries to make this clear, but by pointing out that we now (now in 1956, that is) have the ability to go around the world in 8 days, it kind of muddies the waters, and cheapens the struggle.
I don't even find the need to fault this film for being excessive, extravagant, or even corny (though it is all of those things...). Turns out there are plenty of other movie "sins" for me to mention. One is repeated violations of the "Show, don't tell" mantra - which is odd because the film is already so visually-based, but it's not enough in a way. There's plenty of scenery, almost too much in fact, so why the need to resort to characters TALKING about what's taken place, rather than showing it? Any time there's a scene of the London gentlemen in the club, talking about Fogg's exploits, that's one less time we the audience get to SEE that exciting thing happen.
Next violation is something I call the "Hey, look at that!" technique. This occurs when a film simply can't afford to take the stars of the film to every exotic locale, but we are meant to think that they have. So they mix either stock footage or 2nd unit footage with a reaction shot of the stars going, "Hey, look at that!" Many films do this, but few are so blatant about it. It makes me wonder if the stars of this film did any location shooting at all. There's a reason we don't see footage of Phileas Fogg standing next to a matador, or a temple in Hong Kong - because he wasn't there! This also tends to cheapen the struggle.
I also have to call attention to the abysmal soundtrack, which most of the time is just a rehash of the melody of "O Britannia" - I never want to hear this riff again, used here as a sonic crutch again and again. Yes, we KNOW he's British, thanks. And when our band of travelers gets to America, it changes to "Yankee Doodle" and "Oh, Susanna" (somebody explain that song to me, please. I thought it was weird when I was a kid, and I grew up, got over it and never followed up...) Did they blow the budget on so much location footage that they couldn't hire someone to write an original score? The one exception is a great little medley of 1800's ditties played on a saloon piano by a very famous singer making a cameo.
I'll have to compare the film with the plot of the original novel - there's a detective here that follows Fogg around, convinced he's a bank robber and not just independently wealthy. (But apparently dumb, because he probably spends more money on travel expenses than he stands to win on the wager...) But if he were the thief, why would he be trying so desperately to get back to England? For that matter, why would he be spending the stolen money so extravagantly - wouldn't that be counter-productive to stealing it? For a detective, this guy doesn't really think things through - he's like Javert in "Les Miserables" but without a lick of common sense.
I suppose it's not about the money, or about the speed, but in the end it's a test of the ingenuity of the traveler. I learned this myself in San Francisco this summer, when my travel appointment got cancelled, and I had to devise a one-day tour of the city on the fly. Still had a great time. Speaking of which, Fogg and company arrive in San Francisco on election night, apparently. Damn, I missed it by just 3 days. Something similar happened last week with "Once Upon a Time in Mexico", which depicted the famous Mexican "Day of the Dead" celebration of Nov. 1, and I was watching it on Nov. 4. If I had been just a bit more ambitious this year, my movies would have synched up perfectly with the calendar here at the end. Lesson learned.
NITPICK POINT: In this film, everywhere around the world (with one notable exception) everyone seems to speak fluent English. This would be more likely now, but in the 1870's? Doubtful.
NITPICK POINT #2: Fogg + his manservant travel by balloon over the Alps - but wind up on the Iberian Peninsula. How did this happen? They were paying attention to what direction they were going, weren't they? Aren't balloons subject to the wind, and wouldn't the jetstream just naturally take them in the correct direction? Did the prevailing winds change direction that day?
NITPICK POINT #3: They say that news travels fast, but again, this is the 1870's - the days of the Pony Express, when the fastest way to get news across America was to hand-deliver it. No telephone or telegraph yet. SO, how did news of Fogg's exploits while in Hong Kong or San Francisco get to England before he did? For that matter, how did anyone in the club verify that he had done any traveling at all? He could have just planted a few news stories and stayed at home for 80 days.
Which is kind of what I did - I travelled around the world without leaving the couch thanks to movies, and I still beat Fogg's itinerary by over two weeks! I think I beat him with the virtual mileage, too. So that happened...
Starring David Niven (last seen in "The Guns of Navarone"), Cantinflas, Shirley Maclaine (last seen in "The Apartment"), Robert Newton, Robert Morley, with cameos from Sir John Gielgud (last seen in "Arthur 2: On the Rocks"), Noel Coward, Charles Boyer, Cesar Romero, Cedric Hardwicke, Peter Lorre (last seen in "Casablanca"), Red Skelton, John Carradine (last seen in "The Grapes of Wrath"), Frank Sinatra (last seen in "The Manchurian Candidate"), Buster Keaton (last seen in "The Navigator"), Joe E. Brown, Andy Devine, Glynis Johns, Hermione Gingold (last seen in "Gigi").
RATING: 5 out of 10 sandbags
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