Trip to the center of the Earth
The success of 20.000 leagues of submarine trip (Disney, 1954) was continued by that of The return to the world in 80 days (United Artists, 1956), rewarded with a óscar. This supposed the appearance of diverse adaptations of works of Julio Verne in the last 50 and the first 60.
Trip to the center of the Earth (20th Century Fox, 1959) directed by Henry Levin is very far of being a big adventures movie, but it is the best adaptation up to the date of this outstanding figure of Verne. James Mason is the teacher Lindenbrook and his nephew is interpreted by the rocker Pat Boone. We complain today of politically correct thing, but it seems that already in 1959 it was turning out to be essential that also a woman was traveling to the center of the ground not to be less, so a nonexistent feminine personage was added to the share-out in the novel, which interpretation runs in charge of Arlene Dahl, actress of an elegance who remembers Deborah Kerr. The bad thing is that, against any logic, it supports his elegance during the whole dangerous underground long journey. Things of Hollywood. It is curious to observe how in later adaptations of the work this feminine personage has survived, although with other names.
I give well-known the original argument, to which in this adaptation it joins, in addition to the mentioned lady, a villain called Saknussem, who in the novel is quoted only like a precursor of the trip of the protagonists. Also there is an unbearable duck that there takes the Icelandic servant Hans and whose tragic end plucked to hands of the villain, it is of being grateful. Between the fantastic ingredients there are a few giant reptiles obtained with the old trick, proper of the epoch, of iguanas and lizards make up and to increase them of size on the screen. The truth is that the bugs move well and give the pego. The underground scenes rolled in the National park Caverns of Carlsbad (New Mexico), what turns the dark and almost claustrophobic Verne tubes into a place full of crystalline formations of beautiful colors. Showy added other is that of the ruins of Atlantis, the shanty town to which the explorers come and of that they escape for a long natural chimney, impelled by a powerful air current, which he returns them, overcoming the obstacles and the common sense of the scriptwriter, to the terrestrial surface. I stop for others more understood than I, the interpretation of the symbols that proliferate in the history: the cavern, the duck, the reptiles, the ruins …
Finally, a correct, well made movie, which he does not bore in spite of his 124 minutes of duration. The edition that I have comes from a restoration done in 2002, as it appears in the section of special characteristics of the DVD.
If you want to see some blunders of the movie, pulsate here (it is in English)
Here there are photos of Arlene Dahl, that as it seems it is not any more not less than the mother of Lorenzo Lamas, the king of the beds.
National park Caverns of Carlsbad (USA)
Wikio
I have earring to write on my dear Julio Verne in the binnacle. The first book in conditions that I read was a Trip To The Center of the Earth, hurried up by this adaptation. I was loving the dragons of komodo giants … Thank you, Carlos, for reminding to me this movie, which he already not remembered
The truth is that, at present, I find after movies as this one are missing. There can turn out to be a pelín cutronas, but they had a delight that few ones have achieved to overcome.
For the time in which I am filmed, it was a tremendous movie, bearing in mind that in Panama, the black and white televison came in the year 1960. I have to meet it like 40 years ago and I enjoyed it from beginning to end. By chance a local televisora offered it yesterday in the night and I enjoyed it again with the first time. Nowadays everything is digital and computers, like that he films anyone, earlier there was more imagination and creativity.
Greetings
Julio Verne would have to do more movies of this class as trip to the center of the ground I believe that to been for me the movie that more me to been desirable, so many adventures delight is very nice me the imagination and creativity that it has.
besossss
Esther, we still do not enjoy movies done by dead persons (although many it seems that they it are) and we do not also know if Julio Verne had started directing although I have the impression of which small movies that perhaps it would manage to see suggested him big opportunities to make come the fantasy that his histories detach.
Although the awake movie certain exploratory emotion astonishes not even the fourth part that the Verne histories. That the special effects are vulgar not desmerece by no means the movie but rather the invulnerable human beings badly painted the portrait in those that scarcely there perceives the incredible delight that the adventure must produce. It presents a too maternal ground to us forgetting that if the history has grace is not only because the personages come up to his center but because his way is calamitous and much more inhospitable than it results in the movie.
In his favor he has reminding the curiosity capacity to us without limit of the human being. In against his anthropocentrism boasting since Julio Verne in spite of the fearlessness of his personages made them conscious of that they could not be imposed on a world of which to sorrow there were a derisory and minuscule part and it is for it that they thrill the histories not because as in the movie the stones conspire in favor of the survival of his inhabitants.
[...] was not a daughter of the teacher Verne if not of the scriptwriters Walter Reisch and Charles Brackett who adapted the novel to the movies for the version of 1959 introducing several elements as an antagonist and an affectionate interest [...]