20,000 Leagues Under The Sea (1916)

The United States sends a naval ship to investigate rumors of a giant sea monster running amok in the ocean. When the ship is rammed by the monster, it turns out to be a submarine captained by the mysterious Captain Nemo (Allen Holubar), who rescues a handful of survivors and takes them prisoner on his submarine, the Nautilus. Very loosely based on the novel by Jules Verne and directed by Stuart Paton. Although the film takes the central premise of Verne's 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA, there's very little else of the book in the film's narrative. It also incorporates bits and pieces from other Verne novels like THE MYSTERIOUS ISLAND (the Union soldiers in a runaway balloon crashing on the island) and AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS (the Indian girl). The film was quite innovative. It was the first movie to be filmed underwater (remarkable in that underwater cameras hadn't been invented yet), exotic location shooting, the construction of a full size submarine and two years in the making at a budget of $500,000 (around 12 million in 2020 dollars). As to the film itself, it's surprisingly entertaining although it slows down during some of the underwater sequences (suddenly you feel like you're at an aquarium) which must have seemed quite startling to 1916 audiences but has since been surpassed in other films due to technology. Still, it's a must for fans of silent cinema. With Jane Gail, William Welsh, Matt Moore, Curtis Benson and Edna Pendleton.