Technical data
- Title: THE MYSTERIOUS ISLAND
- Year: 1972
- Production: Copercines, Cité Films, Filmes Cinematográfica.
- Country: Spain-France-Italy.
- Direction: Juan Antonio Bardem.
- Cast: Omar Sharif, Ambroise Mbia, Jess Hahn, PhilippeNicaud.
Description and synopsis
This project, that involved production companies from several countries, came to Lanzarote in the early seventies to shoot an adventure film full of illustrious names. The Mysterious Island was based on a novel of the same name by the French writer Jules Verne (1828-1905), the famous precursor of the science fiction genre and author of such well-known works as Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Journey to the Centre of the Earth and Around the World in Eighty Days.
The island of Lanzarote, which has been awarded UNESCO Biosphere Reserve and Geopark status, offers ideal landscapes for adventure stories and filming in striking natural spaces. In this case, the extraterrestrial lava fields of the Montañas de Fuego (Fire Mountains), the enigmatic Cave of Los Verdes and the mysterious beach of Las Malvas served as the setting for a film that tells the adventures of a group of prison escapees who, after being swept away by a hurricane, arrive on a distant island full of surprises.
The Mysterious Island involved the participation of numerous extras from Lanzarote, but above all the presence of Omar Sharif, the legendary Egyptian actor who starred in iconic films such as Lawrence of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago and who won major international awards such as Golden Globes, Césars from the French Academy and the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. Another prominent name occupied the director’s chair, the Spaniard Juan Antonio Bardem. Brother to another film director – Pilar Bardem – and uncle of the actor Javier Bardem, his star was already on the wane, but he had made several key films in the history of Spanish cinema at the beginning of his career (Death of a Cyclist and Main Street) in the 1950s, when he won, among others, several awards at the Cannes and Venice film festivals.
