Scene selection — Geoff Carter: ‘20,000 Leagues’ gets new life on DVD

Friday, May 23, 2003 | 9:08 a.m.

Geoff Carter is a Seattle based free-lance film critic and entertainment writer. Reach him at carter@pre2k.com.

When I was 10 years old I didn't think humans could get any cooler than Captain Nemo. He had a crew of loyal men ready to fight and die at his command, he had a submarine that's still ahead of its time, and, most importantly, he had a thick black beard and a cultured European accent.

If I could be Captain Nemo, I thought, I'd rule the known universe. With my beard.

This summer, as Nemo prepares for a hi-tech, kung-fu makeover (Jules Verne's character appears in "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen," coming in July), it is fitting that Walt Disney Pictures should issue a two-disc version of Nemo's finest hour, the epic 1954 film of his "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" (Disney DVD, $29.99). Nemo has surfaced, and this terrific DVD set proves you can't keep a good beard down.

First and foremost, the DVD of "Leagues" offers the best transfer of the film you've ever seen. With completely remastered audio and picture (letterbox format!) and a complement of documentary extras every studio should strive to match in releasing films from their back catalog, the DVD of "Leagues" makes the film look sound like the event picture it was, for the first time in years.

Director Richard Fleischer, the son of animation pioneer Max Fleischer (formerly a bitter rival of Walt Disney's; the DVD explains how the rift was mended), took Verne's convoluted travelogue and made it into a breakneck adventure story, complete with gunships, cannibals and a legendary battle with a giant squid.

Working from blueprints, literal and metaphorical, created by design artist Harper Goff and Walt Disney himself, Fleischer helped create one of the most literate -- and underrated -- action movies of all time. It probably didn't hurt that he had Kirk Douglas, James Mason, Paul Lukas and Peter Lorre to bring Verne's characters to life -- truly a packed boat.

Their performances hold up amazingly well. Mason gives Captain Nemo a depth as complex now as it was in my pre-teens. He veers from cool megalomania ("I have done with society ... Therefore, I do not obey its laws") to threadbare desperation almost instantaneously. He's the most charismatic of villains -- the kind you would drop everything to follow, or strive to become.

By comparison, Douglas' Ned Land seems one-dimensional -- at first. He rejects Nemo on every level, even his table manners. (Nemo: "There's a fork on your left, Mr. Land. Or aren't you accustomed to utensils?" Land: "I'm indifferent to 'em.") But that doesn't stop him from saving Nemo's life late in the film, or expressing his admiration when Nemo saves his.

Douglas is the only star of "Leagues" still alive to offer testimony -- and his remembrances, delivered in his halting, post-stroke voice, are a highlight of the set. He's just as excited to remember "Leagues" as we are to watch it again.

The set is rich with so many bonuses, it's impossible to list them all. You get the standard director's commentary and documentary, but also Lorre's audio dubbing sessions, technical blueprints of Nemo's submarine -- the Nautilus, still the best-looking submersible craft ever to grace modern film -- and even the Cinemascope Donald Duck cartoon, "Grand Canyonscope," that played before the picture.

Once again, Captain Nemo rules the known universe. I'm just happy to be on the same boat with him, thanks to Disney's meticulously assembled DVD set.