The Fabulous World of Jules Verne
- Lubor Tokoš: Simon Hart
- Arnost Navratil: Professor Thomas Roch
- Jana Zatloukalová: Jana
- Miroslav Holub: Count Artigas
- František Šlégr: Captain Spade
- Václav Kyzlink: Engineering Serke
Deadly Invention is a Czechoslovak science fiction film from 1958 based on the novel by Jules Verne. He is regarded as the most successful Verne adaptation in film history. The German version was dubbed by the DEFA.
Action
The French professor Roch has an explosive and a cannon developed with which the soil can be destroyed. Roch and his assistant, the engineer Simon Hart, are kidnapped by a band of pirates on an island that has only one submarine access. To this end, the pirates use a submarine.
Since the pirates convince the naive scientists Roch, that his kidnapping is only the development of his invention, Roch is still working on perfecting his weapon. In fact, the pirates want to bring in the possession of the perfect weapon to carry out their depredations with impunity can. But Simon Hart recognizes the true motives of the pirates. He manages to inform the international public. Then, the island of warships circled. Roch realizes that he has been deceived, and blows up the island with a gun in the air. Hart and Jana, who was also kidnapped by the pirates, escape in a balloon.
Tricktechnik
For the special effects Zdenék Rozkopal, Jiri Tarantik, Bohuslav Pikhart, Antonin Horak, Arnost Kupicik, Jindrich Luska, Frantisek Krxmar, Zdenek Zeman Ostrcil and Joseph were responsible.
Zeman and his colleagues used the illustrations of the original Jules Verne novels as templates for a surrealistic setting, which thus came very close to the atmosphere of the original literary work:
He ( Zeman ) overlaid the images with a fine network of parallel lines and thereby achieved striking spatial effects. Any realistic illusion is lifted ... Just this distance, but it is thanks to them that even what is technically and scientifically long outdated or disproved, is suddenly re-experienced as a utopia.
Reviews
At the World Exhibition in Brussels in 1958, the film won the Grand Prix.
To the film commented on the movie watchers: "You can probably call justifiably this ... work as best Jules Verne movie that was ever made. " The Variety wrote: "Certainly the most unusual and particular artistic werkgetreueste transmission of a Jules Verne 's history in the medium of film. "
Tradition
After the film was not aired on German television since the mid- 1980s, is since 2008 a DVD edition of Ostalgica.
The Italian version of La diabolica invenzione and the U.S. version of The Wonderful World of Jules Verne are completely set on YouTube.