Adapted from the novel Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne
A prim and proper English gentleman named Phileas Fogg makes a wager that he can circumnavigate the globe in exactly 80 days, and immediately sets off with his new valet, Passepartout, to prove it. Unbeknownst to him, Fogg is pursued by a detective named Fix, who is convinced that Fogg robbed the Bank of England and is using this trip as an excuse to flee the country.
This might be the worst adaptation to have won this award so far. Not that the novel is the best book I've ever read, but it is far and away superior to the film. There are so many problems with the movie I hardly know where to start. It completely ruins the character of Passepartout. In the book he's a loyal, well-meaning but slightly clueless Frenchman. The movie turns him into a woman-chaser of ambiguous nationality. I guess he's Spanish, since he speaks Spanish, but sometimes he calls Fogg "Monsieur", so it's like, was he supposed to still be French with a Spanish accent? Speaking of which, the movie adds this whole section where the travelers take a hot air balloon in France, trying to get to Marseilles, but they end up in Spain where they have to waste an entire day fighting bulls. This scene is way too long, entirely unnecessary, somehow doesn't seem to put them behind schedule, and is not even remotely close to anything that happens in the book.
The Spanish detour is probably the most extreme example, but similar unnecessary additions occur throughout the film. Instead of Passepartout merely wandering into an Indian temple with his shoes on, he has to be chased in there after trying to bullfight a sacred cow (what is it with this movie and bullfighting?). Later they enter an American saloon for no reason and stay there way too long. Generally, when novels are adapted into screenplays, more scenes are cut than added. Obviously, some bits were cut in order to make way for these additions, but not nearly as many as necessary, resulting in a 3-hour long film adapted from a novel that's just over 300 pages. Compare that to one of the best adaptations, Gone with the Wind: that novel is over three times as long as this one, but the movie is only one and a third times as long. Not to mention that cutting out those few minor scenes from the book gives the movie possibly the worst pacing ever. The book doesn't have the best pacing, but at least it carefully tracks how long it takes to get to each milestone and how long they stay there and whether they've gained or lost time. In the film, one has no idea how much time is passing, which is odd since the 80-day deadline is crucial to the plot.
Even if it had been a decent adaptation, which I cannot stress enough that it wasn't, it would not have aged well, and not just because it's now laughable to think that it would take anywhere near that long to go around the world. The original book is quite racist, and uses a lot of problematic terms like "savages" to describe the native peoples in the lands the travelers cross. One might think that since the film was made over 80 years after the book was written, they might have found some way to make it less blatantly racist while still remaining faithful to the time in which it takes place. Unfortunately, this was the 1950s, and if anything, the movie is more racist than the book. I mean, the vast majority of the "native peoples" were very clearly white actors in makeup. I get that they wanted to put fun cameos of famous actors around the world, but this doesn't really work when all the famous actors are white. Shirley MacLaine is supposed to be Indian? Peter Lorre is supposed to be Chinese? I know this was 60 years ago, but still. They could have at least gotten actual people of color to play the extras, and I think maybe there were a couple, but for the most part, sadly no. This would be cringe-worthy enough if it was a good movie otherwise, but the fact that it's cringingly racist and a badly-paced, boring mess means I cannot recommend against it enough.
That being said, I feel that in fairness I must point out that this movie does have some of the best ending credits I've ever seen, brilliantly designed by the legendary Saul Bass. So if, you know, you ever end up having to watch it for a self-imposed Oscar project, you at least have that to look forward to. Personally, I'm going to make sure that, if I continue tackling different categories, I never pick another one that this movie won. I've had to watch it twice now; that is more than enough.
Up next: Best Picture Winner The Bridge on the River Kwai, based on the novel The Bridge over the River Kwai by Pierre Boulle. I'm not sure why they changed the preposition, but if that's the most unnecessary change it will be leaps and bounds ahead of this adaptation.
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