Around the World in 80 Days (Michael Anderson, 1956)

Quite possibly the worst film to win the Best Picture Oscar, Around the World in 80 Days is so godawful that you long for the right-wing program of The Greatest Show on Earth, something/anything to contextualize the endless travelogue footage. Where DeMille constantly cuts to anonymous heterosexual couples with 2.5 kids to underline the circus as great American family entertainment, Anderson (who??) ties his vacation slides to the gaze of characters played by Cantinflas or David Niven or whoever with no coherent ideological purpose or discernible narrative exigency. Was 1956 America really that thirsty for images of flamenco dancers and bullfighters and quaint non-Westerners and sunsets and elephants and buffalo, etc.? 

I haven't read the Jules Verne novel on which the film is based. But I would be shocked if it were as shoddy as the lazy narrative ellipses, unexplained story logic, and time-wasting dénouement here. Reeking of cynicism, Anderson has no clue what to do with his camera. Many scenes play out mostly in master shots as if the camera were too weighted down by the elephantiasis of the production to allow for any cuts. Even the storied cameos are pointless. A close-up of Frank Sinatra playing the piano and...that's it? Not a word sung or even spoken? 

Then there's Edward R. Murrow's intro which features three whole minutes of Méliès' A Trip to the Moon and some shots of missiles. And an utterly wasted Shirley MacLaine as an Indian princess rescued by white savior Niven. And marauding Native Americans. And the inhuman 163-minute running time (at least in the version I saw). ARGH!

Grade: F

Other Hollywood films which deserved the Best Picture Oscar much more than Around the World in 80 Days: I mean, practically any damn movie but (coughs) The Searchers, Edge of Hell, Tea and Sympathy, Written on the Wind, Bhowani Junction, The Girl Can't Help It, Invasion of the  Body Snatchers, The Killing, Great Day in the Morning, Hollywood or Bust, The Man Who Knew Too Much, Rock Around the Clock, Baby Doll, The Wrong Man, Bigger Than Life, Seven Men From Now, Don't Knock the Rock, Shake, Rattle and Rock!, Rock, Pretty Baby!, While the City Sleeps, etc.