Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea

With the release of 2012 a couple weeks ago, comparisons between Roland Emmerich and Irwin Allen came running fast and furious. Appropriately enough, today we feature a film directed by Irwin Allen, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. There are plenty of similarities between the two. A gigantic threat to the world, an ensemble cast, science charitably described as shaky, and a certain obsession with the latest in special effects. Allen might not have had CGI, but he does have the best scale models 1960s dollars could buy.

Here, we've got an exciting new submarine, helpfully completely explained with an elaborate tour immediately at the beginning of the picture. Walter Pidgeon is Admeral Nelson, the man behind the submarine, which is big and exciting. Peter Lorre is his science partner guy. Robert Sterling is Captain Lee Crane, one of the many ruggedly handsome men on the crew. There's also Frankie Avalon, pop singer, doing stuff. Also doing stuff is Barbara Eden as a woman, Crane's girlfriend, who is there with Joan Fontaine to break up the sausage party. Miguel Alvarez is a survivor found on the ice played by Michael Ansara, who is a preacher who believes the end is nigh. Together, they live on the exciting submarine, when they discover that the sky is on fire because the Van Allen Radiation Belts weren't fully understood by the man writing the script. There's also Jimmy Smith, played by Mark Slade, whose fate can be determined immediately after he is introduced.

Voyage leans heavily on spectacle and novelty. The hope is clearly that people will be so amazed by things underwater that they can gloss over the things that aren't very interesting. It's clear that the sheer novelty of a heavily underwater movie was hoped to enthrall everyone, even if it wasn't an entirely great movie. There are lots of look at that moments, including a giant squid which gets on the cover of the DVD.

However, there's a problem, and that's pacing. In short, the pacing is no good. The first 20 minutes are entirely exposition. The next 20 minutes are also exposition, with a couple things happening. The vast majority of the picture entails explaining what is going on, what was going on, and what will be going on. Since the science involved doesn't actually have anything to do with real science, one gets tired of constant sequences of people sitting around talking in submarine sets.

That sitting in sets has the unfortunate effect of getting rid of the tension. While there's a world crisis going on. Cities are burning, humanity is on the brink of destruction, and there's a highly risky plan to save it. However, we are safely seated in a stable, sterile submarine with all of the fire and destruction being kept safely at an arms distance. No matter what's going on in the rest of the world, we aren't ever in danger, because the submarine of hopes and dreams never feels like it's in genuine trouble. Plus, the world loses contact quite early on, making it easy to forget the stakes. While the tension eventually spills over into the submarine - and the film gets much better as a result - it takes so long to happen one is forgiven if they bail before that happens.

It is a pretty interesting premise, and the idea of a small group of people in close quarters forced to execute a plan they don't completely trust under extreme duress is a smart one. The recent Battlestar Galactica series mined a lot of genuine tension and excitement out of this same situation. The moments very late in the film that mine this conflict show plenty of promise. It just takes too long to get there. While the last forty minutes might be exciting, and finally achieve the tension the film had, until that point, failed to, it's still after an hour of awkward exposition and flawed explanations.

There's also something really odd that doesn't help - there's too much space, both in the sets and between the actors on them. This ties in to my earlier complaint about the tension taking far too long to build, but I can't help that the tension would be increased if it was filmed in a way that was a bit more claustrophobic. Huge sets and huge distances between characters - combined with a camera that wants to take in the entire set and isn't especially dynamic - ruins the illusion of close quarters. If you set a movie in a sub and mine tension out of it, you want the characters to be getting in each others' way, or at least feel that they are. They don't really do that here, and it's a subtle but unfortunate issue.

Curiously, while I didn't particularly like the film, there's a lot of promise in the general idea. It takes a long time to get there, but that same last hour has a lot of interesting ideas I'd like to see someone explore more. In spite of the poor science, staid direction and the dreadful pacing, there's a good movie hidden in here.

I've never been able to say that about Roland Emmerich.

Maltese Falcon

Hot on the heels of Return of the Jedi, here's another movie that you've probably seen even if you haven't seen it. How many times has a Humphrey Bogart character showed up in a movie, talking in that distinctive manner? How many dames have shown up at a private detective's office, clearly up to no good? How many times have venetian blinds shown up prominently in black and white movies? I won't claim to be an expert on film noir - I haven't seen this movie until now, so that much is very obvious - but the performances and style are pretty clearly influential.

So what is it that makes the Maltese Falcon a classic? Well, when we start, it's not immediately obvious. Mary Astor appears Humphrey Bogart's detective agency, saying that her sister has been kidnapped, or at least persuaded to run away with a man, and she wants her found. Bogart's slightly creepy partner is more than willing to shadow him, because he wants to get into Mary Astor's...skirt. It seems like a pretty simple case, and then Bogart's partner gets shot. At this point, we know that there's something bigger going on. Then creepy, creepy Peter Lorre shows up. Then you REALLY know this shit just got real.

The trouble with mysteries is you really don't want to give up very much of the storyline, because the mystery is part of what draws you in. This is especially true of the Maltese Falcon, since it thrives on the audience, and the characters, not completely knowing what's going on. From the moment the first shots are fired, you know that there's something going on that you're not being told, and the desire of you and all the characters to find out the full story drives the story.

The great thing about this film is that you can never quite tell anyone's motivations until around the last scene. Yes, you can tell Peter Lorre is up to no good - he's Peter Lorre - but the lead characters are deliciously morally ambiguous. Is Bogart a greedy lech, is he up to no good, or is he secretly a good guy? Is Mary Astor really in love with him, or using him to get herself out of a bind? You can never quite tell if characters are telling the truth, and can never completely trust anyone on the screen.

The great part is, in spite of not being able to trust the characters, you can't help but like them. Bogart manages to be witty, clever, and charming, even as you can sense that his character is about 75% asshole. You can't just help but like the guy, yeah he's banging at least 2/3rds of the female cast and seems driven mostly by cash, but hell, he's so interesting to watch and has an obvious good side, so you can forgive his foibles. Astor is a bit more whiny, and her lies are often so obvious you wonder why Bogart bothers, but the lies make her more interesting to watch, and the mystery underneath them keeps you interested.

Yeah, the Maltese Falcon is a classic, a lesson in how to tell a mystery. It's one of those movies that should be required viewing for anyone who wants to make a film. It's more than just that though, that it has stood up until now even after being widely copied and aging 70 years says a lot about just how good it is. No matter how much time passes and how many films come and go, it's stuff like this that will stick around forever. A movie that's just good, if good in a way that amateur film critics on the internet have great trouble thinking up a satisfactory conclusion when they write about it.