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VERNE, JULES (1828-1905). French writer.
Films based on his work: 'Round the
World in 80 Days (1914); Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea
(Stuart Paton 1916); The Mysterious Island (Lucien Hubbard, Benjamin Christensen,
uncredited, and Maurice Tourneur, uncredited 1929); Mysterious Island (Tainstvennyy
Ostrov) (Eduard Pentslin 1941); Mysterious Island (serial) (Spencer
Gordon BENNET 1951); 20,000 Leagues under the Sea (Richard
FLEISCHER 1954) (also reedited
as episodes of Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color); Around the
World in Eighty Days (Michael
ANDERSON 1956); The
Fabulous World of Jules Verne (Vynález Zkázy)
(Karel ZEMAN 1958); From the Earth to the Moon (Byron HASKIN 1958); 800
Leagues over the Amazon (800 Leguas por el
Amazonas) (Emilio Gómez Muriel 1959);
Journey to the Center of the Earth (Henry LEVIN 1959); Master of the
World (William Witney 1961); Mysterious Island (Cy Endfield 1961); Valley
of the Dragons (Edward BERNDS 1961); Five Weeks in a Balloon (Irwin
ALLEN 1962); The Three
Stooges Go Around the World in a Daze (Norman Maurer 1963); Ukradená
Vzducholod (Zeman 1967); Jules Verne's Rocket to the Moon (Those
Fantastic Flying Fools) (Don Sharp 1967); Captain Nemo and the
Underwater City (James Hill 1969); Strange Holiday (Mende Brown
1970); Hector Salvadac's Ark (Na Komete) (Zeman 1970); The
Mysterious Island of Captain Nemo (La Isla Misteriosa) (Juan Antonio
Bardem and Henri Colpi 1973) (also reedited as tv miniseries); Kapitan Nemo
(Vasili Levin and Edgar Smirnov 1975).
Viaje Fantástico en Globo (René Cardona, Jr. 1975); Wielka
Podróz Bolka i Lolka (Stanislaw Dulz and Wladyslaw Nehrebecki 1977); Where
Time Began (Viaje al Centro de la Tierra) (Juan Piquer Simón 1978);
Tajemství
Ocelového Mesta (Ludvik
Razá 1979); Castle in the Carpathians (Stere Gulea 1981); Mystery on
Monster Island (Misterio en la Isla de los
Monstruos)(Simón 1981); Les Jeux de la Comtesse Dolingen de Gratz
(Catherine Binet 1981); Mysterious Planet
(Brett Piper 1982); The Mysterious Castle in the Carpathians (Oldrich
Lipský 1983); 20,000 Leagues under the Sea (animated) (1985); Around
the World in Eighty Days (animated) (1988); Tajomstvo Alchymistu
Storitza (Pawel Trzaska 1991); Eight Hundred Leagues down the Amazon
(Luis Llosa 1993); Verne World (video game) (1995); Around the World
in Eighty Days (animated) (1999); The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
(Stephen Norrington 2003); Around the World in Eighty Days (Frank Coraci
2004); 80 Days: Around the World Adventure
(video game) (2005); 30,000 Leagues under the Sea
(Gabriel Bologna 2007); Journey to the Center of the Earth (Davey Jones
and Scott Wheeler 2008); Journey to the Center of the Earth (Eric Brevig
2008).
Television
movies based on his work: Die Reise um die Erde in 80 Tagen
(Hans-Joachim Hildebrandt and Horst Schönemann 1963); Die
Reise um die Erde (Hans-Dieter Schwarze 1964); Ukradená Vzducholod
(Zeman 1967); L'Orgue Fantastique (Jacques Trébouta and Robert Valey
1968); De la Terre a la Luna (José Solé 1969); Nemo (Jean Bacqué
1970); 20,000 Leagues under the Sea (animated) (Jules Bass and Arthur
Rankin, Jr. 1973); Maître Zaccharius (Pierre Bureau 1973); Twenty
Thousand Leagues under the Sea (animated) (Joseph BARBERA and William HANNA
1973); Utazás a Holdba (Miklós Csányi 1974); The Mysterious Island
(animated) (Leif Gram 1975); Master of the World (animated) (Gram 1976);
A Journey to the Center of the Earth (animated) (Richard Slapczynski
1977); 5 Weeks in a Balloon (animated) (1977); The Return of Captain
Nemo (Alex March and Paul Stader 1978); From the Earth to the Moon (animated)
(Slapczynski 1979); Off on a Comet (animated) (Slapczynski 1979); Le
Tour du Monde en 80 Jours (André Flédérick 1979); Le Voyage dans la Lune
(Jean Bovon 1986); Journey to the Center of the Earth (William Dear
1993); Journey to the Center of the Earth (animated) (Laura Shepherd
1996); 20,000 Leagues under the Sea (Anderson 1997); 20,000 Leagues
under the Sea (Don Hardy 1997); Journey to the Center of the Earth
(George Miller 1999); Les Voyages Extraordinaires de Jules Verne—Le Tour
du Monde en 80 Jours (animated) (Henri Heidsieck 2000); Journey to the
Center of the Earth (Les Voyages
Extraordinaires de Jules Verne—Voyage au Centre de la Terre)
(animated) (Zoltán Szilágyi Varga 2001); 800
Leagues down the Amazon (Les Voyages
Extraordinaires de Jules Verne—La Janganda) (animated) (Jean-Pierre Jacquet 2001); The
Greatest Show on Ice (Les Voyages
Extraordinaires de Jules Verne—César Cascabel) (animated)
(2001); Mysterious
Island (Les Voyages Extraordinaires de Jules Verne—L'Ǐle
Mystérieuse) (animated) (Claude Allix 2001);
The Southern Star (Les Voyages
Extraordinaires de Jules Verne—L'étoile du Sud) (animated)
(Armando Fereira 2001); Le Docteur Ox (Philippe Béziat 2004); 20,000
Leagues under the Sea (animated) (Scott Heming 2004); Mysterious Island
(Russell Mulcahy 2005).
Television
episodes and series based on his work: "Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea:
The Chase: Part 1," "Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea: The Escape: Part 2"
(1952), episodes of Tales of Tomorrow; "Twenty Thousand Leagues under
the Sea" (six-part episode) (1952), episode of Tales of Adventure; "Fogg
Bound" (1960), episode of Have Gun—Will Travel; "The Terrible
Clockman" (1961), episode of Shirley Temple Theatre; "L'Ǐle
Mystérieuse" (1963), episode of Le Théâtre de la Jeunesse; Journey to
the Center of the Earth (animated series) (1967-1969); "The Brady Kids on
Mysterious Island" (1973), episode of The ABC Saturday Superstar Movie; Around
the World in Eighty Days (animated series) (1972-1973); Around the World
with Willy Fog (animated series) (1981-1982); Around the World in Eighty
Days (miniseries) (1989); Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water (animated)
(1990-1991); Willy Fog 2 (animated series) (1993-1994); Mysterious
Island (series) (1995); The Secret Adventures of Jules Verne
(series) (2000).
From one
perspective, it is not difficult to discern why the works of Verne have proven
so popular with filmmakers. Like Edgar Allan POE, he offers a name that brings
a certain amount of prestige to any project, and as is the case with Poe, his
major works have long been in the public domain, so that there are no costs
involved in appropriating his stories. But Verne's novels have been filmed far
more often than Poe's stories because the French author, unlike Poe,
consistently produced what seem in retrospect to be ideal stories for
films—robust adventure stories, usually with well-drawn heroes and villains, set in
exotic realms like distant countries, the North and South Poles, the depths of
the oceans, vast underground caverns, and outer space. And the fact that almost
all Verne films are little more than adventure stories is not the fault of
Verne, who regularly included social commentary and satire along with his
thrills. However, these materials were suppressed by early translators, who
bowdlerized his novels to serve as suitable books for children, and this has
remained the perception of filmmakers who have not bothered to consult the more
recent, and more accurate, translations of his most notable works. Thus, only
fleetingly do occasional films like the 1958 version of From the Earth to
the Moon and Jules Verne's Rocket to the Moon (both loose
adaptations of the same novel) address the sorts of political and cultural
issues that were near and dear to his heart.
Verne also
cannot be credited, or blamed, for one type of film inspired by his work—the
colorful, playful fantasies—that except for superficial borrowings bear
little relationship to the tone and contents of the stories he wrote, those
these can be appreciated on their own terms. These include the classic short
films of Méliès and his imitator, Segundo de CHOMÓN, as well as two later films
by noted Czech filmmaker Karel ZEMAN, The Fabulous World of Jules Verne
and Hector Servadac's Ark, which are highly praised in some quarters.
(But not here—I tend to find his films hard to sit through, and I generally
regard Zeman as a classic example of a man with a talent for making films that
people wish to admire, but do not genuinely admire. But that is an argument for
another entry.) There is also no reason to associate Verne's name with projects
that bear little relationship to his works other than their expedient use of
his name, such as the video game Verne World and the series The Secret
Adventures of Jules Verne.)
In the second
category of film attributed to Verne, the various big-budget adventure epics are
closer in their substance and spirit of his stories, even if they are routinely
simplified and sometimes endowed with more giant monsters than Verne himself
chose to present. Some of these, like Richard
FLEISCHER's Twenty Thousand
Leagues under the Sea, Michael
ANDERSON's Around the World
in Eighty Days, and both major versions of Journey to the Center of the
Earth (1959, 2008), can be appreciated as superior popcorn entertainment, and
one might praise Verne for providing an aura of dignity to such thoughtless but
enjoyable projects. Others, though, have been clunky disasters, ranging from
the infamous 1929 production of Mysterious Island to Jackie Chan's
misguided remake of Around the World in Eighty Days. In between these
extremes are numerous films that are merely dull, such as the Verne adaptations
of Irwin ALLEN (Five
Weeks in a Balloon, The Return of Captain Nemo), Byron
HASKIN's From the Earth to
the Moon, and similarly forgettable films like 1961's Mysterious Island
and Master of the World, Anderson's dreary remake of Twenty Thousand
Leagues of the Sea, and the television sequel The Return of Captain Nemo.
Related to these are the even duller animated versions of Verne's novels made
as television entertainment for youngsters, who are undoubtedly the only people
able to enjoy them, or even endure them (thus, a younger version of myself was
a big fan of the Saturday-morning cartoon series Journey to the Center of
the Earth, closely based on the 1959 film and featuring seemingly weekly
encounters with dinosaurs and other improbably monstrous denizens of Earth's
deepest caverns).
Since the once-unknown
regions that Verne's adventurers ventured into have now been thoroughly
explored, and proven to the devoid of the mysteries and monsters that he
presented, it is strange that his novels have remained so popular with
filmmakers. But fantastic stories set in Victorian times may be more attractive
than ever because of our recent fascination with that era, as exemplified by
"steampunk" adventures like the graphic novel series (1999- ) and film The
League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003), which qualifies as a Verne
adaptation since it includes Captain Nemo as one of its main characters. Strangely
enough, if recent films are any guide, the second century after Verne's death
may bring more adaptations of his works than the first century—proving that
the distinctive tombstone "portraying his immortality," depicted in every issue
of Hugo Gernsback's Amazing Stories, was indeed prophetic, and
ironically making the entry on the oldest figure in this encyclopedia one that
will most frequently need to be updated
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