In the fifties, everything apropos the movies was giving: Big screens, big question, big casts. It was the cycle of Cinerama, CinemaScope, "The Robe," "The Ten Commandments," "Ben-Hur," and from 1956 "Around the Coterie in Eighty Days." To rendition Whoopi Goldberg, if the movies weren't big, they'd be TV.
There was, of course, a concerted pains in the fifties to get people elsewhere of their houses, away from their newfangled TV sets, and away into theaters. So the whole kit from widescreen and stereo to 3-D and Aroma-O-Foresightedness was used to seduce folks to the pictures. "Around the Clique in Eighty Days," needless to say, was among the biggest of them all, glaze its message by winning five Academy Awards, including Best Picture of the year. Warner Bros. sees to it that so stylish a movie is done up on DVD in appropriate style in another of their famed Two-Disc Exclusive Edition sets.
The confabulation is based on one of Jules Verne's few realistic (that is, non science-fiction) stories, the 1873 novel prevalent circumnavigating the orb in sole eighty days, an almost superman but not illogical achievement back then. A irons casually remarks remaining a show-card diversion at a oppressive London men's club that a person could, just so, go about the world in eighty days, and his whist partners bet him that it can't be done. The fellow takes the bet and sets off on the track down.
The movie is little more than a glorified travelogue, with a whole lot of beautiful and belly settings (filmed in general on unearthing on all sides of the world), a few unqualifiedly chance adventures, and the biggest remove of cameos till doomsday assembled for the duration of a passage picture thrown together in a gargantuan three-hour chunk. Yet it's more than tolerably to hold one's heed for its 182-minute duration. Either you're marveling at the spectacular scenery, admiring the brilliant cinematography, enjoying the stereo inquire and Technicolor, or seeing how many famous actors you can spot in minor roles. Today, this cameo-spotting bold is a little more challenging disregarding nevertheless in place of movie buffs, since most of the actors in the murkiness have either died or been forgotten.
David Niven stars as Phileas Fogg, a cold, friendless, unengaged, superiority-distinction English gentleman of indeterminate means, who takes the bet of going around the existence in what in 1873 was considered an inordinately lacking in period of time. But Fogg is nothing if not prompt, perpetually living by the clock, and insists it can be done, laying out his entire fortune of £20,000 on the wager. In the process of events, Fogg becomes a celebrity as newspapers worldwide hunt down his escapades; and reading about him, Scotland Yard becomes suspicious that he may be the squire responsible for robbing the Bank of England! This fancy would not be lost on the film's audiences then or straight away occasionally, because Niven had already played a gentleman road-agent in the large screen "Raffles" (1940) and would again build up b act up such a character in "The Pink Panther" (1963) as Sir Charles Lytton, the naughty Phantom (or as Inspector Clouseau says, "Sir Charles Phantom, the notorious Lytton"). Fogg may be an unbearable snob of imperative expectations, but he is nevertheless captivating, and Niven would later say it was the favorite role of his career. Watching Fogg slowly transform into a human being is delicious.
An even more varied and equally endearing kind is that of Fogg's experimental valet, Passepartout, played by Mexico's most famous comic actor, Cantinflas, whom Charlie Chaplin once described as the "world's greatest comedian." Cantinflas was said to hold been able to do almost anything (rider, juggler, wrestler, bullfighter, gymnast, clown), and he is send to good physical take advantage of in the film, fit its most serenely fabulous figure.
The only other two actors of note in the film are Shirley MacLaine in one of her first screen roles as the Indian Princess Aouda, who comes to diminish Fogg's unfriendly exterior; and Robert Newton, speculator known to American audiences as Fancy John Silver in "Treasure Island," as The heat Inspector Fix. While MacLaine was at the opening of a lengthy and well-to-do film career, Newton would die of a heart erode sharply after the movie was completed. Queer are the ways of Ruin.
Almost as notable as its principal players, however, is the movie's end of cameos. This is, in truthfully, the movie that started the trend, the interval "cameo role" having been coined specifically for the layer by its producer, Michael Todd. I won't hole you by listing everyone who appears in the story, but I'll point out a few who show up for at least a moment or two: Sir John Gielgud, Noel Poltroon, Robert Morley, Trevor Howard, Charles Boyer, Jose Greco, Cesar Romero, Gilbert Roland, Reginald Denny, Sir Cedric Hardwicke, Charles Coburn, Peter Lorre, Hermione Gingold, George Raft, Marlene Dietrich, Red Skelton, Open and above-board Sinatra, John Carradine, Buster Keaton, Joe E. Brown, Tim McCoy, Jack Oakie, Victor McLaglen, Andy Devine, Edmund Lowe, John Mills, and Beatrice Lillie among many others. Famous newsman Edward R. Murrow narrates the prologue.
The film was directed by Michael Anderson, who had not done many films of distinction before "Around the World" except perhaps "The Dam Busters" (1954), which was more acclaimed for Eric Coates' music ("Dambusters March") than anything else, and "1984," and who would do little of distinction afterwards, except perhaps "The Shoes of the Fisherman," "The Quiller Memorandum," and "Logan's Run." Anderson's occupation was to have things exciting at a conservative pace, at which he succeeds.
The film's organizer actually upstaged the director in the filmmaking department. Mike Todd had never produced a movie before "Around the Clique," having only worked as an executive producer on one other theatrical unloose, "This Is Cinerama," in 1952. And he died in a level surface failure in 1958, leaving "Around the World" as his one legacy. But showman and entrepreneur that he was, he ensured that his individual-and-only film would have a undying impact. Not only did it win all those Oscars and vote in as him a multimillionaire, the film would predate and work on such big name clever epics as "The Great Race," "Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines," and "It's a Mad, Having a screw loose, Indiscreet, Mad Society."