Around World/80 Days [VHS]

I had original in VCR and changed to DVD.This gives a big improvement in both picture and sound and a far more compact package,plus many special features, which were not on VCR.
I personally rate this version with David Niven etc as far superior to other versions issued later.
I recommend this as an excellent,all round entertaining film, which is suitable for all family viewing.

I was a very young boy when my father took me to see it and it has left me an everlasting impression. I've seen this film over and over again during the years, each time with the same pleasure, discovering new facets and details. One has no words to present the great David Niven, unique in his genre and the one and only Phileas Fogg. I possess the three versions of this film. One could say, this one is the original, a trip around the world, oldfashioned and romantic. The one with Pierce Brosnan is more adventurous and a pleasure to watch. Brosnan, as are many English actors, is a gentleman and a very convincing Fogg' I loved his character. The third one with Jackie Chan is completely different, tailored for Jackie Chan and his monkey tours. Different, imaginative and very pleasant. Three films, three epochs, three convincing ways of interpreting Jules Verne history.

Mike Todd's Around the World in 80 Days has a reputation as (alongside De Mille's the Greatest Show On earth) the most resented or downright disliked Best Picture Oscar winner of the classic era, and a first viewing in its impressively restored Scope version after years of seeing cut fullframe TV prints does tend to magnify its flaws: it feels as if every scene is dragged out beyond its natural life, as if producer Mike Todd and writer S.J. Perelman never heard that brevity is the soul of wit. Much of the film is played out in surprisingly static long takes (as opposed to the kind of invisibly impressive long takes that practically edit the film through movement that original director and co-writer John Farrow could have bought to the film), there's not a huge amount of imagination on display in the script, the locations are rarely used in terribly interesting ways and it really is hard to see quite why it was such an all-encompassing award winner in its day (Avatar may well suffer the same revisionist fate once the novelty of the format has worn away and left only the film itself in its wake).

Yet for all that, it's hard to really dislike it. It could do with a few more moments like Passepartous nonchalantly scooping snow from the top of the mountain to chill Phileas Fogg's champagne as they fly over the Alps in a balloon, but there is charm to it, even if it is overstretched, Niven and Cantinflas are perfectly cast and it has enough nice moments to carry it through its three hours running time (though there's nothing as impressive as the sight of Sir Cedric Hardwicke hanging onto an elephant for dear life in a televised gala party at Madison Square Garden that's included on the DVD extras - even the audience think this bucking Barbar is going to throw him before his eight seconds are up!). But imagine what would have happened if Dino De Laurentiis hadn't nabbed the army he was planning to use and Mike Todd went ahead with his version of War and Peace instead...

With the film spread over two discs, retaining the film's original intermission, it has an impressive extras package. Alongside the televised gala there's also an audio commentary by Brian Sibley, some outtakes, a documentary about the producer, appropriately entitled Around the World of Mike Todd, newsreel footage of the Los Angeles and Spanish premieres, a newsreel interview from the Oscars, stills gallery, original theatrical trailer and 1983 reissue trailer, and introductions by Robert Osborne.