With a half-million dollar budget and state-of-the-art 'special effects', this film may have been the first science-fiction 'epic'. Loosely based on Verne's eponymous novel and on the book's sequel 'Mysterious Island', the film follows the mysterious Captain Nemo on his quest for vengeance aboard his fabulous underwater boat "The Nautilus". The film wisely sets the action in the mid 1860's, when a submarine would still be a fantastic thing (by 1916 submarines were familiar military hardware, the RMS Lusitania having been sunk by a U-boat torpedo the previous year). Notable for being the first feature to include underwater photography, the film made excellent use of J.E. Williamson's 'photosphere', a submersible chamber that could house a cameraman and his gear. Shot in the clear and brightly lighted waters around the Bahamas, there are numerous scenes of Nemo or his crew walking across the ocean floor, avoiding sharks, investigating wrecks and, climatically, battling an enormous octopus (perhaps primitive looking to modern viewers but amazing at the time). The scenes of the Nautilus utilised a full size model capable of surface movement and a model for submerged scenes (scenes of the Nautilus surfacing are obviously done with mattes rather than models, with the submarine seeming to appear, rather than arrive, on the surface). The secondary story, which weaves in elements of "Mysterious Island" is less interesting, as several escaped Yankee POWs in a balloon land on a deserted (almost) island and meet 'a child of nature', a ridiculous feral-girl character with an implausible backstory (even by Hollywood standards of acceptable coincidence). The acting is typical of American silent films, with lots of melodramatic gesticulations and grimaces. The film stays true to the novel, presenting Nemo/ Prince Dakkar (played by Alan Holober) as being of Indian origin, but the makeup used is almost black-face and the character look a bit like a heavily-tanned, emaciated Santa at times (for some reason, the film's follow-up, 1929's 'Mysterious Island' reimagines the character as being a count from a fictional Eastern European county). There are numerous versions online. I watched the TCM version, which used Dvorak's New World Symphony as a score (often inappropriately IMO) and oddly seemed to lack the octopus scene (usually at around the 1 hour mark). The DVD version (Image Entertainment) that I obtained from the local library is much clearer that any of the on-line versions I found. Worth watching if only for the ground-breaking cinematography.
Review of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
