Journey to the Center of the Earth - 1959
Jul. 23rd, 2008 10:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
amediaThis was a good movie, better than I expected. I think I might have seen it on TV when I was much younger; every once in a while a scene would look familiar. I had thought it was in black-and-white, but that's because my parents didn't get a color TV until 1975. (Hey, people thought they were bad for your eyes back then!)
The plot was more complex and interesting than the recent movie. I was all "yay" that the main romantic intrigue was between two middle-aged people, which is a rare and wonderful thing in a Hollywood movie, but then I found out that the actress playing the apparently-middle-aged widow was only 31 at the time. Humph. But she and James Mason struck some great sparks (according to the IMDB they didn't get along offscreen either) and I enjoyed their interaction and eventual rapprochement.
There were some rather silly musical interludes near the beginning so Pat Boone could showcase his talents (I think of him as a preacher, but he was a hot young stud at this time!), but fortunately they mostly vanished once they got to the underground part.
Very early in the movie, the professor receives an award and when he walks into class, his well-groomed students, all dressed in suits, stand up and greet him with a congratulatory song in 3-part harmony. I can't help but think that our glimpse of Trevor's sloppy and disrespectful class early in the new 3-D version was meant as a parody of this scene!
The plot was more complex and interesting than the recent movie. I was all "yay" that the main romantic intrigue was between two middle-aged people, which is a rare and wonderful thing in a Hollywood movie, but then I found out that the actress playing the apparently-middle-aged widow was only 31 at the time. Humph. But she and James Mason struck some great sparks (according to the IMDB they didn't get along offscreen either) and I enjoyed their interaction and eventual rapprochement.
There were some rather silly musical interludes near the beginning so Pat Boone could showcase his talents (I think of him as a preacher, but he was a hot young stud at this time!), but fortunately they mostly vanished once they got to the underground part.
Very early in the movie, the professor receives an award and when he walks into class, his well-groomed students, all dressed in suits, stand up and greet him with a congratulatory song in 3-part harmony. I can't help but think that our glimpse of Trevor's sloppy and disrespectful class early in the new 3-D version was meant as a parody of this scene!
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Date: 2008-07-31 03:54 pm (UTC)Eeee! I am impressed with your mad movie-recognition skilz!!!!
I saw part of "Look Back in Anger" at a Rat Patrol gathering - it was very intense, and I thought Gary Raymond had great chemistry with Richard Burton, something I didn't expect from an actor I only knew as a supporting character on a TV show.
I missed "Scarlett," though I later learned he was in it, but I did get a chance to see him "strapping tall and totally splendid," as you say (what a felicitous turn of phrase!) at the Long Range Desert Convention in Austin in 2001. Shamelessly hotlinking again:
Here are pages with more pictures (from my friend Kat, who took lots):
http://people.virginia.edu/~fke2d/rp/lrdc/lrdc1.htm
http://people.virginia.edu/~fke2d/rp/lrdc/lrdc2.htm