Journey to the Center of the Earth

In Edinburgh, a professor finds a note written centuries earlier inside a rock he has bought: the writer says he found a way to the centre of the earth. The professor travels to Iceland with his student and descends through the mouth of a volcano. With them are a widow, an Icelandic guide and a duck. The subject is not discovery but a race. Someone else is down there too and both parties want to arrive first; the tension comes less from nature than from that competition. The form is wide screen and colour; the caverns were built on stages, though some sections were shot in the Carlsbad caverns. For the giant reptiles, live lizards were fitted with attached dorsal fins, a method common in films of the period and criticised now for how the animals were treated. The source is Jules Verne's novel. Bernard Herrmann's score is the most praised element; he used five organs in the orchestra and removed the strings entirely for the underground sections. Henry Levin directs. James Mason plays the professor, Pat Boone the student and Arlene Dahl the widow. Who it is for: viewers who like classic adventure and the aesthetics of studio-built sets. Who it is not for: anyone with no tolerance for the scenes using live animals, or wanting pace; the film runs over two hours and takes a long time to get underground.