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David Niven and Cantinflas head Around the World in Eight Days in this Oscar-winning epic |
Faithfully following Jules Verne’s original novel (with
added balloon trips), Phileas Fogg (David Niven) is a punctilious and precise
Englishman of the old school, whose life is run like clockwork and whose only
passion is whist. Nevertheless he accepts a challenge from his fellow members
of the Reform Club (among them Trevor Howard, Robert Morley and Finlay Currie) to
circumnavigate the globe in 80 days or less. Setting off with his manservant –
the recently hired, accident prone Passeportout (Cantinflas) – Fogg races
around the world, from Paris to Cairo to India to Hong Kong to Japan to San
Francisco. Along the way he rescues Princess Aouda (Shirley Maclaine) from
death by human sacrifice in India and has to confront the suspicions of
Inspector Fix (Robert Newton) who is convinced that Fogg is responsible for a
huge theft at the Bank of England. Can Fogg make it back to the Reform Club
hall on time to win his bet?
Around the World was the brain-child of its producer
Michael Todd. A noted Broadway producer, Todd had been looking to make a
similar splash in the movies. Perhaps it’s no surprise that he decided the
finest way to do this (after the mixed success of a movie version of Oklahoma)
was to produce something that‘s pretty much akin to a massive Broadway variety
show. Around the World – as you would expect – is an incredibly episodic
film, seemingly designed to be broken down into a number of small sequences
either to showcase the scene’s guest star or to provide comic opportunities for
Cantinflas to display his Chaplinesque physical comedy.
That and lots of opportunities for some lovely scenic
photography. Nearly every major sequence is bridged with luscious photography
capturing some exotic part of the world – from the coast of Asia to the Great
American Plains. It’s pretty clear this is a major attraction of the film: come
to the movies and see those parts of the world you’ve always dreamed of, just
for the price of a movie ticket! Surely introduction of a hot air balloon to
allow Fogg and Cantinflas to travel from Paris to Spain was purely to allow lovely
aerial shots of the French countryside and chateaux. It’s the sort of film that
proudly trumpeted in its publicity the number of locations (112 in 13
countries!), the vast number of extras (68,894!) and even the number of animals
(15 elephants! 17 fighting bulls! 3,800 sheep!). It’s all about the scale.
That scale also carries across to the guest cameos. Between
enjoying the scenic photography, viewers can have fun spotting cameos. Can that
really be Noel Coward running that employment agency! The chap who owns the
balloon, I’d swear that’s Charles Boyer! Wait that steward: that’s Peter Lorre!
Good lord that’s Charles Coburn selling Fogg tickets for the steamer! Oh my,
Buster Keaton is helping them to their seats on the train! Marlene Dietrich is
running that saloon – and good grief that’s Frank Sinatra playing the piano! Most
of the stars enter into the spirit of the thing, even if they frequently start
their shots with backs to the camera, before turning to reveal their
star-studded magnificence. Sadly time has faded some of the face recognition
here, not helped by David Niven (perfectly cast as the urbane and profoundly
English Fogg, so precise that his idea of romantic talk is to recount past
games of whist) probably today being one of the most famous people in it.
Todd marshals all this with consummate showman skill. It’s
handsome, very well mounted and generally entertaining – even if it is
painfully long (it’s not quite told in real time, but can feel like it at points).
The film is nominally directed by Michael Anderson. However, I think it’s
pretty clear his job was effectively to point the camera at the things Michael
Todd had lined up (be they location or stars) – Todd had already dismissed the
original director, John Farrow, after a day’s shooting for not being
sufficiently ”co-operative”. To be honest it’s fine as this is an entertainment
bereft of personality, instead focused on being “more is more”.
Part of its extended runtime is due to the long comedic
sequences given to Cantinflas. A charming performer – and possibly the most
famous comedian in Latin-America at the time – Cantinflas can be seen doing
everything from bicycle riding, to bull fighting (for a prolonged time), to
gymnastics to horseback riding. (Far different from the unflappable and
spotless English gentleman Niven is playing.) Your enjoyment of this may depend
on how far your patience lasts. I’m not sure mine quite managed to last the
course. Sadly one of Cantinflas’ greatest comedic weapons, his Spanish
wordplay, was completely lost in translation.
There are some decent sections. The iconic balloon flight is
well mounted and gives the most impressive images (the famously vertigo-suffering
Niven was replaced by a double for much of this). Others, like the bullfight or
an interminable parade in San Francisco go on forever. The casting of Shirley
MacLaine as an Indian princess is an uncomfortable misstep (even at the time
MacLaine felt she was painfully miscast), made worse by an offensive “human
sacrifice” storyline – that got cut when the film was screened in India. Robert
Newton though is very good value as the misguided but officious Inspector Fix.
Around the World in Eighty Days is grand, handsomely
mounted entertainment. But to consider it as a Best Picture winner feels very
strange. It’s not a lot more than an entertaining variety show, its plot
impossibly slight (made to feel even more so by its vastly over-extended run
time). While you can enjoy it in pieces, it finally goes on too long for its
own good. Entertainingly slight as it is, it’s still one of the weakest Best
Picture winners ever.