Search and Rescue: Sound Found

Featuring The Mysterious Island and Noah’s Lark (both 1929). And beer.

Tues. March 4, 2008 at 8:00 PM
At the Northwest Film Forum – 1515 12th Ave. (on Capital Hill between Pike and Pine)
Free for NWFF members. $8.50/general admission. $6.00/children under 12 and seniors.

Event Details | Program Notes | Original Posters | Critical Reception | Survivial of Film and Sound Elements | Related Links | Further Reading

Program Notes

• Search and Rescue: Sound Found program notes – 2 pp., illus. (PDF, 664 kb)

Original Posters

Contemporary Critical Reception

New York Times, 1929

“[J]ust the sort of thing that will fill children with mingled feelings of awe and delight. A fantastic undersea melodrama.”

Variety, 1929

“[A] wealth of special sets, costumes, mechanical devices and elaborate miniatures. Its impressiveness and unusualness are unquestioned, and therein rest its box office possibilities.”

Survivial of Film and Sound Elements of The Mysterious Island (1929)

No complete prints of The Mysterious Island (1929) with the original tinting and two-color Technicolor sequences are known to survive in any format. However, a single 35mm nitrate reel from the original release is in the non-circulating collection of the UCLA Film and Television Archive. According to the available catalog information, it is from a Dutch release print (with Dutch intertitles), and consists of a mixture of amber-tinted and two-color Technicolor footage.

The UCLA archives also hold a complete set of original Vitaphone record discs. These may be the same set of discs discovered in 1995, as reported by The Vitaphone Project in their newsletter Vitaphone News (vol. 3, no. 1; Summer/Fall 1995).

At some point, reportedly in the 1950s, 16mm black-and-white sound reduction prints were made by MGM for television distribution. 16mm prints were also made for the home and educational markets apparently well into the 1970s; tonight’s print is believed to have been struck in 1977.

The Turner Library has a complete print of unknown format, but probably a 16mm TV print released circa the late 1950s or early ’60s — probably the same version shown tonight. On rare occasions the film is shown on the Turner Classic Movies cable channel.

It seems probable that other film archives might have prints in one format or another, but exhaustive Internet searches have produced no information to that effect. The sole known exception to this is Swank, a non-theatrical distributor which offers a 16mm print for rent.

Home Video

To the best of our knowledge, the 1929 version of The Mysterious Island was never officially released to home video. The IMDB.com records for the film indicate a LaserDisc version was released, but no other information is provided — no distributor, no year(s): it’s literally a empty page. Given that IMDB is prone to error (for example, J. Ernest Williamson is listed as Producer when he only did special second-unit underwater photography), and in the absence of any other confirmation, we believe this not to be true.

DVD-R copies occasionally appear on the collectors’ grey market, and copies are known to circulate on the BitTorrent file-sharing network. But given the rarity of physical prints, these are probably video captures of a cable-cast by Turner Classic Movies made by enterprising aficionados. Even these are fairly rare.

Related Links

• The Mysterious Island (1929) — extensive plot summary and commentary by “Lyzard” from the web site, And You Call Yourself a Scientist
• UCLA Film & Television Archive catalog entry: The Mysterious Island (1929) — details about the single nitrate film reel (Dutch version) and the complete set of original Vitaphone sound discs in their collection.
• J. Ernest Williamson — Williamson was the first filmmaker to actually shoot underwater, using a kind of special diving bell he called the “photosphere.” He was engaged by MGM to shoot what were intended to be positively epic scenes for The Mysterious Island. However, extended production complications and consecutive hurricanes hitting his Bahamanian location resulted in the destruction of the huge underwater sets and ultimately only a couple of his shots made it into the final release. Learn more about his pioneering work below.
  • “With Williamson Beneath the Sea” by Brian Taves (Journal of Film Preservation, Volume XXV No. 52, April 1996)
  • Williamson’s ‘Photosphere’ by Gidi Raanan

Further Reading

Sadly, there is precious little information to be found about The Mysterious Island (1929). Some of the better science fiction film encyclopedias and a handful of web sites include capsule descriptions of it.

Following are recommended books relevant to early sound films, early animation and the Fleischer brothers, and related topics.

• The Coming of Sound by Douglas Gomery (NY: Routledge, 2005) — The best place to start for those interested in the subject. A short, scholarly-yet-approachable, and absolutely outstanding book on the advent of sound film, capably and convincingly (albeit somewhat bitterly) challenging core assumptions by Crafton. Includes a chapter on non-US sound innovations.
• The Talkies: American Cinema’s Transition to Sound 1926-1931 by Donald Crafton (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1997) — Widely acknowledged as the best (if Amero-centric) history of the conversion from silent to sound film.
• The Shattered Silents: How The Talkies Came to Stay by Alexander Walker (NY: William Morrow & Co., 1979) — A shorter, more approachable history of the early talkie era, though some of its facts have since been superceded by research by Gomery, Crafton and others.
• Before Mickey: The Animated Film, 1898-1928 by Donald Crafton (University of Chicago Press, 1982; 1993 ed.) — The authoritative work on silent-era animation, with extensive discussion of the vital role played by Max and Dave Fleischer. The 1993 edition includes a new afterword with with chapter-by-chapter updates.
• How Motion Pictures Are Made by Homer Croy (NY: Harper & Brothers, 1918) — Includes a lengthy discussion of the underwater photography innovations by J. Ernest Williamson. Extremely rare, but it can be found in the non-circulating reference collection of the Seattle Public Library, and on the Google Books web site (where it can also be downloaded as a PDF).
• Of Mice and Magic: A History of American Animated Cartoons by Leonard Maltin (NY: Plume, 1987 rev. ed.) — An excellent and profusely-illustrated historical survey, which devotes an entire chapter to the career of the Fleischer brothers.
• Out of the Inkwell: Max Fleischer and the Animation Revolution by Richard Fleischer (University Press of Kentucky, 2005).
• Witchcraft Through the Ages: The Story of Häxan, the World’s Strangest Film, and the Man Who Made It by Jack Stevenson (Godalming, England: FAB Press, 2006) — Includes a relatively brief section about Benjamin Christensen’s tenure at MGM, including his stint as director of The Mysterious Island. Also a highly recommended (if slim) book about the titular film and the director.