This is a legitimate Oscar BEST PICTURE winner no one bothers to talk about nowadays, a globe-trotting travelogue in its most ostentatious fashion, Michael Anderson's epic adaptation of Jules Verne's novel has little substance to offer other than playing up to the hackneyed stiff-upper -lipped Britishness, perfunctorily garnished with a limp romance between the Victorian English gentleman Phileas Fogg (Niven) and an Indian princess Aouda (a brown-faced MacLaine), a fair damsel-in-distressed who is worth rescuing all the more because of her educational background.
Opening with footage of George Méliès' A TRIP TO THE MOON (1902) to pay homage to the author Jules Verne and mankind's indefatigable will of exploring the unknown and unreachable, AROUND... inherits the same spirit as Fogg makes a hefty wager with his fellow members of the Reform Club that he can circumnavigate the globe within 80 days, and making the most of the “money talks” credo, Fogg and his new manservant Passepartout (a penny-farthing-riding Cantinflas) embarks on their journey with a bag full of cash, that can buy off any sort of conveyances available to expedite their trips, whether it is a gas balloon, an elephant or seaworthy craft.
While Fogg never troubles himself with gallivanting in these various localities they transit, whist alone is enough to keep him contentedly occupied, much of the legwork is devolved to Passepartout, who is constantly distracted by fine ladies passing by, but also valiant enough to solve many a hitch cropping up on the way, including a prolonged bullfighting sequence in Spain (for plain showing-off reason though); his misadventure in Hong Kong at the hand of police inspector Fix (Newton), who is so dead sure that Fogg is a major bank robber and goes all his way to arrest him; a circus stint in Japan and lastly, almost being immolated by the Sioux people in the wild wild west, Cantinflas is totally having a ball with all the hustle and bustle and physical stunts, whereas Niven mostly concerns with his ethnocentric fastidiousness,saddled with a nonplussed MacLaine is barely given any lines to utter.
Corralling a swarm of cameos from name stars, AROUND… is a standard bearer to reassure those billing-concerning performers that there is safety in numbers to give audience a star-spotting game to play, and it has a 6-minute long closing credits sequence ingeniously designed by Saul Bass as the last hurrah and prompts audience to recollect a re-run of all the escapades inside one's own head. Yours Truly's high points include Sir. John Gielgud's impeccable tirade, Buster Keaton's endearing homage of his masterpiece THE GENERAL (1926 ) and Marlene Dietrich imperturbably adorned in particolored glamor.
Marrying original location images (sublime sunsets) with the epic soundstage illusions (all coordinated brilliantly with Victor Young's bombastic score), AROUND… is a Hollywood extravaganza in its most literal sense and a helluva vanity project to sail through onto safe, even prosperous waters ( it is the antithesis of a CLEOPATRA-esque catastrophe), sandwiched between AN AMERICAN IN PARIS (1952) and GIGI (1958). '50s sees quite often when the Academy opts for tinsels-and-exotica-riddled frivolity over the more homebound epics with a weighty emotional and societal charge, like George Stevens' GIANT (1956) in this instance, the joke is totally on them, which again dins into us that Hollywood's taste is scarcely the veritable benchmark of cinematic extraordinariness.
referential entries: Michael Anderson's LOGAN'S RUN (1976, 7.1/10); Richard Fleischer's 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA (1954, 7.0/10).
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