This first adaptation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's book is about an expedition to a plateau in the Amazon area where still dinosaurs live. The purpose of the trip is to save a researcher and to provide proof of living dinos.
The original of this 104-minute movie seemed to have been lost for a long time and there was only a 50-minute version of the film in circulation. But recently, a version of 94 minutes has been found and restored and I'm discussing this version here.
In 1925, the year of the appearance of this film, the mass of education came up. For the first time in history, education was offered to a wide audience. Never in history have so many people been able to read and write and newspapers were as important as mass media. Between 1870 and 1925 many dinosaur fossils were discovered which unleashed a new rage; Everyone wanted to know everything about it. Combine that with Darwin's evolutionary theory becoming ever more familiar and you have the basic ingredients for a good book and that great book came in 1912 and it would be a matter of time for it to be filmed. This filming was possible because the 'stop-motion' animation technique was just invented. This meant that small dinosaurs were modeled that, when moved and filmed frame by frame suggested motion during playback. 'Stop-morion' animator Willis O'Brien became the first man to use this technique in a feature film.
Willis O'Brien
Conan Doyle wrote a strictly adventurous novel with only brave men, but because the producers feared no women would come to see the film, Marion Fairfax, the scenario writer, was asked to write a love interest in the story. This was also important for another reason, namely that in advance it was not sure whether the animations of the dinosaurs would work. By adding an additional storyline, it was also possible to make a movie without the animations. Fortunately, it was good and the stop-motion dinosaurs, especially seen in the time frame, were successful and the movie critics were enthusiastic about it and the audience also loved it.
Although I found the story of Conan Doyle very original, he was not the first to place dinosaurs in a contemporary age. Jules Verne had already published a story called 'Journey to the center of the earth’ where dinosaurs appeared and 'The flying death' in which a pterodactylus killed people was published at the beginning of the last century. But Conan Doyle was the first to combine it with an undiscovered area. Many people think that Sherlock Holmes was Conan Doyles favorite character, but he actually preferred Professor Challenger, this surly scientist is played in the movie by Wallace Beery. It is assumed that Conan Doyle had the same qualities as Challenger, especially his honesty and the inevitable acceptance in the interest of science. Conan Doyle wrote three more stories with Challenger in the lead.
Wallace Beery
In 1830 a plateau was discovered in southern Venezuela, which looks very similar to the plateau that Conan Doyle describes. But in reality, no dinosaurs were discovered. Only new vegetation was discovered. In the book and the film there are also great apes besides dinosaurs. These apes were seen as the missing link that Darwin sought. The shooting of this ape is a symbol of the superiority of modern man.
The film also includes a native who is stranded on the plateau with the missing scientist. Where this man plays a very small serving and sometimes humorous role in the film, he gets a bigger and more important role in the book. He even gets a hero status in the book. This is not surprising when you think that Conan Doyle often took it upon him to defend the original inhabitants of the various colonies.
Bessie Love en Lloyd Hughes
Although Lloyd Hughes, journalist Ed Malone, and fellow actors Lewis Stone and Arthur Hoyt play their roles very deservingly, but special attention deserves to go to Wallace Beery, who plays Professor Challenger, and love interest Bessie Love. Wallace Beery has always been a star in playing brute characters and does not disappoint in this movie, and Bessie Love honors her name, she is lovely and manages all facial expressions and movements that make a silent film star a good one.
Although there were changes made in the story for the film, Conan Doyle was delighted when he saw this with his family. It remains a monumental milestone in film history that paved the way for movies like King Kong and Godzilla and much later Jurassic Park.
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