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(5/10) In a nutshell: This 1941 Soviet-Ukrainian film is probably the most accurate film version of Jules Verne’s novel The Mysterious Island that has ever been put on screen. Beautiful locations on the shores of the Black Sea help out this film, which nonetheless suffers from creaky and static direction and too much off-screen action. Features Robert Ross, the leader of the African-American community in Moscow during the forties, fifties and sixties.
The Mysterious Island/Tainstvennyy Ostrov. 1941, USSR. Directed by Eduard Pentslin. Written by M. Kalinin, Boris Shelontsev. Based on the novel The Mysterious Island by Jules Verne. Starring: Alexei Krasnopolskiy, Pavel Kiyanskiy, Andrei Sova, Igor Kozlov, Andrei Andrienko-Zemskov, Jura Grammatikati, Robert Ross, Nikolai Kommissarov. Produced by Odessa Film Studio/Gorky Film Studios. IMDb score: 7.0

Pavel Kiyanskiy as Spilett and Andrei Andriyenko-Zemskov as Pencroff in Tainstvennyy Ostrov/The Mysterious Island.
As readers of Jules Verne will know, the 1874 novel The Mysterious Island is science fiction only inasmuch as it is related to the earlier 20,000 Leagues Beneath the Sea, and Captain Nemo and his submarine turn up briefly in the final chapters of the book. But I decided to include The Mysterious Island, or Tainstvennyy Ostrov, as it is known in Russian, as it is something as curious as a 1941 adventure/science fiction film from the Soviet Union with American protagonists, including a black man. Continue reading