Lucien Hubbard

(On Cable TV, August 2022) There are many reasons why I don’t like 1929’s The Mysterious Island, but one really good reason why I respect it. Let’s get the bad out of the way first: For modern viewers, the biggest problem of the film is that it’s a big-budget spectacle that comes from the awkward period between the introduction of sound and its widespread adoption. Designed, produced and largely shot as a silent in an era where crowds were flocking to sound films, it found itself—after a three-year-long production—nearing release with dim commercial prospects… so they added sound. A little bit. In a few sequences. In-between silent scenes with title cards. To say that the result is dumbfounding is understating it, although twenty-first-century audiences used to the weird 1928–1930 interregnum should be familiar with the form. It goes without saying that, as an ambitious big-budget production in the late 1920s, it’s working with baling twine and duct tape in trying to sell us the illusion of a vast underwater adventure. The special effects are rough, and so is everything else about a very ambitious adventure film with Science Fiction elements. The third thing that irks me most is that, despite adapting Jules Verne’s The Mysterious Island, the plot has nearly nothing to do with that classic novel: It’s less a Robinsonade about travellers rebuilding civilization on an island than a series of Captain Nemo adventures prefiguring his role as a supporting character in the original novel. The film’s interest is also lopsided—rather dull in the opening half, much better in the spectacular second one. So, yeah: a big-budget, spectacular Hollywood adaptation that ignores most of its source material. Sounds familiar! And yet that’s the one thing that did intrigue me about this version of The Mysterious Island—it’s a fascinating example of how Hollywood studios have always aimed for expensive spectacles, even when hobbled by the technical capabilities of the late-1920s. Special effects shots are unconvincing, director Lucien Hubbard’s staging is ludicrous, the characters are badly written and the dialogue (read or heard) is ridiculous… but that’s Hollywood’s century-old instincts here realized in their rawest expression. It’s also a relatively rare Science Fiction film prior to 1950, which is rather interesting for SF film historians. (Those film historians also note that the film only made $55K out of a million-dollar budget, perhaps killing off the nascent genre for decades.)  On the other hand, don’t expect much pure viewing please from The Mysterious Island: it’s an artifact, artificial enough that it rarely creates the immersive sense of disbelief to work as more than a demonstration of the era’s filmmaking craft.