published on August 11, 2024 in Celeb

The Three Worlds of Gulliver

Production: Columbia. Director Jack Sher; Producer Charles H. Schneer; Screenplay Arthur Ross, Jack Sher; Camera Wilkie Cooper; Editor Raymond Poulton; Music Bernard Herrmann; Art Director Gil Parrendo, Derek Barrington
Crew: (Color) Available on VHS, DVD. Extract of a review from 1960. Running time: 98 MIN.
With: Kerwin Mathews Jo Morrow June Thorburn Basil Sydney Gregoire Aslan Lee Patterson

Jonathan Swift's 18th-century stinging satire has been considerably softened and drastically romanticized, but enough of its telling caustic comment remains.

Jonathan Swift’s 18th-century stinging satire has been considerably softened and drastically romanticized, but enough of its telling caustic comment remains.

The original four-part work has been trimmed to the more familiar twosome of Lilliput, land of little people, and Brobdingnag, where the natives are as tall in proportion to Gulliver as the Lilliputians are short. The hero’s wife and family of Swift’s tome have been dropped in favor of a fiery fiancee who shares his misadventure in Brobdingnag. Gulliver, thankfully, still goes it alone in Lilliput, according to the film.

The picture is notable for its visuo-cinematic achievements and its bold, bright and sweeping score by Bernard Herrmann. Special visual effects expert Ray Harryhausen, whose Superdynamation process makes the motion-pictured Gulliver plausible and workable, rates a low bow for his painstaking, productive efforts.

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Kerwin Mathews, generally reserved and persuasive, makes a first-rate Gulliver. Among the more arresting performances are those of Basil Sydney as the pompous emperor of Lilliput, Martin Benson as its conniving minister of finance, Marian Spencer as the vain empress, Mary Ellis and Gregoire Aslan as king and queen of Brobdingnag.

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