20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954 film) financial risk to the studio should it flop. Upon the film's original release, "The New York Times" film critic Bosley Crowther gave it a generally positive review by stating that, "As fabulous and fantastic as anything he has ever done in cartoons is Walt Disney's "live action" movie made from Jules Verne's '20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.' Turned out in CinemaScope and color, it is as broad, fictitiously, as it is long (128 minutes), and should prove a sensation—at least with the kids." In his 1967 biography "The Disney Version", the critic, Richard Schickel, stated that James Mason was "superbly
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea seas and charted all oceans. Verne would have known of Matthew Maury's international fame and perhaps Maury's French ancestry. References are made to other such Frenchmen as Jean-François de Galaup, comte de Lapérouse, a famous explorer who was lost while circumnavigating the globe; Dumont D'Urville, the explorer who found the remains of Lapérouse's ship; and Ferdinand Lesseps, builder of the Suez Canal and the nephew of the sole survivor of Lapérouse's expedition. The "Nautilus" seems to follow the footsteps of these men: she visits the waters where Lapérouse was lost; she sails to Antarctic waters and becomes stranded there, just