Wednesday, Film4, 4pm
Journey to the Centre of the Earth—a title that evokes lava tubes, prehistoric monstrosities, and the peculiar tendency of Victorian scientists to go spelunking without so much as a hard hat. Jules Verne’s subterranean saga has seen multiple cinematic incarnations, but the 1959 film directed by Henry Levin remains a gold-standard gem of mid-century pulp adventure. Starring James Mason as Professor Oliver Lindenbrook, the film blends charmingly outdated geology with a gleeful disregard for plausibility, all wrapped up in that vibrant Technicolor glow. The Icelandic settings and matte-painted vistas evoke a kind of exotic wonder that sits somewhere between The Lost World and a particularly ambitious episode of Doctor Who.
But let’s not skip past the score—Bernard Herrmann’s orchestral work here is a subterranean symphony in its own right. Known for his collaborations with Hitchcock, Herrmann delivers something quite different in Journey: a booming, brass-heavy soundscape that lends gravitas to scenes involving giant mushrooms and angry dimetrodons. His use of the serpent, a Renaissance wind instrument rarely seen outside the nightmares of first-year music students, is particularly inspired, reinforcing the film’s otherworldly descent. It’s not subtle, but then again, neither is being chased through a cave system by an oversized lizard.
The film may play fast and loose with science (lava is apparently safe to boat on, provided your faith is strong), but its influence tunnels deep into the bedrock of genre media. It echoes in everything from The Hollow Earth theory beloved by pulp writers and conspiracy theorists, to the Xen levels of Half-Life and the magma-hopping jaunts in Final Fantasy. And let’s not forget that without Verne’s literary blueprint, we might never have had At the Earth’s Core with Peter Cushing and a deeply confused Doug McClure. Now that’s a loss civilisation couldn’t bear.