in Criterion Month

Invention For Destruction (1958)

In Criterion Months past, I reviewed two films in the box set, Three Fantastic Journeys by Karel Zeman. The first film I reviewed was Zeman’s 1962 adaptation of the folk tale The Fabulous Baron Munchausen, while a couple years later I reviewed Zeman’s recreation of prehistoric times in Journey To The Beginning of Time. With this entry, Invention For Destruction, I complete the trilogy of films in this box set as well as all of Zeman’s films in the Criterion Collection, and in the process have found what may be my favorite of the three. If nothing else, it’s the one that I find the most visually striking, as it sticks to a very specific visual milieu. And though it’s occasionally lacking in the storytelling department, it quite simply has some of the most stunning special effects in movies I’ve ever seen.

If you’ve seen any of Karel Zeman’s films, it’s not hard to conceive that he’s a huge fan of Jules Verne, but Invention For Destruction is perhaps the most overt homage to the seminal proto-science fiction author. Zeman “freely adapts” (as the credits say) several Verne stories here, though most notably Facing the Flag with a little bit of 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea and The Mysterious Island thrown in. Its visual style also appears to be highly influenced by the illustrated line engravings that accompanied many of Verne’s novels and were a hallmark of print media (if you can call it that) during the late 19th century. There’s probably not much use in me describing the types of etchy illustrations I’m talking about, since once you see a few stills of the movie, you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about if you’ve ever gandered at an old-timey illustration.

The plot of the film is set into motion when a group of pirates capture a brilliant scientist named Professor Roch (played by Arnošt Navrátil) because they want him to develop a destructive weapon that he has long been developing. The pirates are led by the strong-willed Count Artigas (Miloslav Holub) who wants to harness the weapon in the vague aspirations of world domination. However, for most of the film, we follow Simon Hart (Lubor Tokoš), an assistant of Professor Roch who is chasing the pirates because he fears Roch will be too naive to push back against having his inventions used for evil. Hart traverses a variety of different landscapes, from the air, to the sea, to rocky mountain cliffs, taking him on quite the adventure. Meanwhile, various nations throughout the world catch on to Artigas’s plan and surround his cadre of pirates as they prepare to take on everyone with the aide of this potential weapon of mass destruction.

I’m not sure there’s much more I need to delve into as far as the plot since for one, the plot synopsis on wikipedia is one of the shortest I’ve seen for a movie of this stature, so it’s not doing much to jog my memory. And two, the plot isn’t really the point here. The joys of this film are enjoyed best by simply basking in the otherworldliness of its special effects and just how much care is put into each shot. As I mentioned earlier, Zeman evokes a very specific visual style, inspired by a form of sketching that I’m sure was already thought of as quaint when the film was made in 1958, but somehow transports you into a world that feels wildly vivid even if it only vaguely resembles a world that has ever existed.

This is a world filled with steam-powered contraptions and the industrial pulsating of ships and flying machines, evoking the promise of the industrial age and the inventiveness of the early 20th century. The set design has this very flat cartoony style that brings to mind early silent films like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari or the shorts of Georges Méliès (unsurprisingly, Zeman has often been described as the Czech Méliès). Yet how many human actors Zeman incorporates into these artificial-looking backdrops makes the film feel both weirdly human and conceptual at the same time. I can’t say I connected that deeply with any of the human characters, but Zeman manages to keep the them just enough at the forefront that it never feels like its visions of airships and underwater creatures matter more than its actual characters.

It’s not all that surprising that Invention For Destruction was eventually bought by Warner Brothers, repackaged, and released as The Fabulous World of Jules Verne in the U.S. in 1961. This is because its visual style is so arresting that it transcends the fact that you’re watching actors from a rarely discussed country in the world of film, though that didn’t stop Warner Bros. from anglicizing a bunch of the Czech actors’ names in the credits. While it did have this crossover success at the time and has been estimated to be one of the most successful Czech films ever, I’m a little surprised that Invention For Destruction (and Zeman’s work writ large) aren’t talked about in film snob circles more. Maybe his movies are just too fun? I’m not really sure. But regardless, the attention to detail in Zeman’s visual creativity here results in the kind of film that you think of whenever you hear the overused idiom that “movies are magic”.