THE FABULOUS WORLD OF JULES VERNE Movie Review

Vynález zkázy
Invention of Destruction

Czech artist and animator Karel Zeman adapted this extraordinary fantasy film—originally titled Vynález zkázy and released in much of the world as The Deadly Invention—from a number of Jules Verne stories, primarily “For the Flag.” It's a successful attempt at recreating the look of engraved, highly detailed 19th-century illustrations that might have accompanied such fantastic stories when originally published. Zeman has animated the images, and added live actors to the mix. How he brought it all about is anybody's guess, and to tell you the truth, I don't want to know. The illusion is so ingenious and utterly charming that it leaves the category of special effects and belongs more to the province of the magician. You feel the same electric jolt that audiences attending the earliest traveling shadow shows must have felt; you know it's a trick, but it's such an elegant one that you're not just willing to suspend disbelief—you're eager to. This is a movie that modern special effects wizards ought to take a look at, just to be reminded that the technologically perfect creation of an impossible reality—as in a Jurassic Park—should never be mistaken for the one thing that can truly inspire awe: the unleashed imagination. Filmed in 1958, the picture was reworked for its brief American release by Joseph E. Levine and Warner Bros, and ultimately released in 1961 with a weird, tacked-on introduction by Hugh Downs.

NEXT STOP … Fabulous Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1961), Alice (Svankmajer, 1988), The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1989)

1958 83m/B CZ Lubor Tolos, Arnost Navratil, Miroslav Holub, Zatloukalova. D: Karel Zeman; W: Frantisek Hrubin, Karel Zeman; C: Antonin Horak, Bronislau Pikhart, Jiri Tarantik; M: Zdenek Liska.VHS