Best Picture Winner: 1956

Around the World in Eighty Days (1956)

Around the World in Eighty Days is a technical marvel with its stunning, Oscar-winning photography and travelogue approach. We’re taken to London, Paris, Spain, India and China. We travel by balloon, train, boat, and elephant. We witness a bullfight, a deadly religious ceremony, an Indian attack, and a Chinese circus. What we do not do, however, is get involved in the story – because there really isn’t one. Around the World in Eighty Days is a film that dazzles our eyes but leaves our heart cold.

Phileas Fogg (David Niven) is a cold, eccentric, wealthy man who, on a bet, says he can travel around the world in eighty days. While several fellow members of the men-only Reform Club in London make bets against him, Phileas gathers his new valet Passepartout (Cantinflas) and a bag full of pound notes and starts his journey. Along the way he saves a princess (Shirley MacLaine) from death, and maybe finds love. Meanwhile, a not particularly able detective (Robert Newton) pursues Phileas thinking he is the man who robbed the Bank of England and has used the bet to cover his escape.

The film attempts three things to beef up its nonexistent plot: to introduce tension by having Phileas hunted, to have Phileas fall in love with the princess he saved, and to populate the film with cameo appearances by then-famous stars. The first attempt fails because Phileas is able, ever so quickly, to dodge the detective, which means we never feel apprehensive about Phileas’ fate. Basically Detective Fix serves as Wile E. Coyote to Phileas’ Road Runner. The second attempt does not work because the character of Phileas is never explored. We first hear about him via a former valet who talks about how horrible a master Phileas is. The rest of the film is so preoccupied with the scenery that we never get a sense of Phileas the man. The whole romantic angle feels perfunctory. And the third attempt just takes us out of the story as we think, "Hey there's Frank Sinatra!"

While Around the World in Eighty Days is a jolly and good-looking entertainment, it depends only on its sense of visual scale to engage the viewer. While it’s easy to appreciate the effects it has on one viewing the film on the big screen, it’s not so easy to regard this as anything but a superficial exercise.