|
|
|
Journey to the | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
rofessor Oliver Lindenbrook of Edinburgh has just been knighted. He's at the height of his powers, eager for new quests. Thus, when he discovers an artifact within a lump of lava—an artifact that seems to hail from the famous vanished explorer of three centuries ago, Arne Saknussem—he determines to solve the riddle inscribed on the artifact and follow Saknussem's path down an Icelandic volcano to the center of the globe. Accompanying Lindenbrook will be his prize student, Alec McEwen (Pat Boone), who just happens to be in love with Lindenbrook's niece, Jenny (Diane Baker).
Lindenbrook at first enlists the help of a Swedish colleague, Professor Goetaborg (Ivan Triesault). But Goetaborg proves to be a rat, making preparations for a premature try for the descent on his own. But Goetaborg is stymied by a bigger rat: Count Saknussem (Thayer David), Arne's descendant, who murders Goetaborg. The professor's widow, Carla (Arlene Dahl), arrives in Iceland and throws in with Lindenbrook and McEwen. Along with a burly native, Hans (Peter Ronson), who carries his pet duck Gertrude with him everywhere, the quartet descend into the dead volcano. Unbeknownst to them, Saknuseem and a servant have preceded them.
Down below, the going at first is easy. But tremors soon threaten to shake them from narrow ledges; giant boulders come rolling down tunnels; arches crumble. Three weeks go by. They are misled by Saknussem, almost fatally, and realize their rival is present. A crystal cavern with waterfalls is encountered. McEwen becomes separated from the rest, who almost drown. When the trio catch up to the lad, he's held captive by Saknussem, whose servant has perished. They overcome Saknussem and take him along as a hostile reluctant ally.
A vast underground sea and dinosaurs intrude. A maelstrom—the actual center of the earth—leads to the ruins of Atlantis, where Saknussem trespasses too far and gets his comeuppance. Egress to the outer world is achieved via riding a volcanic eruption. The quartet returns, to public acclaim.
Sci-fi or adventure-fi?
In the early days of SF—the era when Wells and Verne were inventing the genre—many other pre-existing modes of fiction got conflated with the practice of "scientific romances," leaving their genetic traces right down to the present day, like mitochondria in our literary cells. Surely the tale of adventurers roaming unexplored parts of the planet was well advanced when Verne set out to write his novels, and this particular example, despite paying much lip service to the rigors and glories of science—"The ultimate aim of science is to penetrate the unknown"; "Science is not a guessing game"—is more concerned with the sheer physical and emotional exhilaration of seeing things no one has ever seen before, in the face of danger and competition. There's no more science here than in a Carl Barks tale of Scrooge, Donald and the nephews hieing off to some exotic locale.
But given this admission, the film still functions pretty darn well as a kind of proto-Indiana Jones vehicle. First of all, the sets, while sometimes hokey, have a certain glamour and induce a measure of claustrophobia alternating with wonder. (The underground lighting is always problematical. The handheld lights of the explorers are often swamped in ambient illumination. The seaside shots are plainly done outdoors. Finally, with a nod to phosphorescent algae, all pretense at modulated darkness is simply abandoned.) The spelunking is convincingly athletic. The period ambiance is well substantiated.
The acting is satisfactory as well. James Mason is a great surly, obstinate, idea-besotted glory hound. The oft-egregious Pat Boone is charmingly bumbling and, shirtless, surprisingly buff. Arlene Dahl—depicted as somewhat matronly, though only 31 years old at the time of filming—is zaftig and alluring.
Mention of Dahl's sexiness brings up the surprising-for-the-era sexual tensions among the explorers. Boone makes a May-December play for her at one point and is rebuffed. Mason and Dahl do a Tracy-and-Hepburn routine of love-to-hate-each-other. Then comes the climax—plotwise and symbolical. As the quartet rides a convenient asbestos saucer up a long volcanic shaft (heh-heh, he said "shaft"), we cut to separate shots of Dahl and Mason (deliberately omitting Boone and Ronson), where they writhe, half-naked in G-force orgasm. Whew!
Once upon a time, our ancestors believed in a hollow Earth, where "the junction of the magnetic forces from the south pole and the north pole" would open a gateway to lost horizons. Today, we know it just ain't so. But watching this film, we can still pretend.
According to the Internet Movie Data Base, Gertrude the Duck never acted in another film. Perhaps she was indeed eaten by Count Saknussem, or the rest of the cast at the end of the shooting. —Paul
|
         |
|
| Home |
Copyright © 1998-2006, Science Fiction Weekly (TM). All rights reserved. Reproduction in any medium strictly prohibited. Maintained by scifiweekly@scifi.com. |
