"Mathias Sandorf" is one of Jules Verne's most obscure novels, practically forgotten today and totally alien to his normal adventure novels written with some scientific expertise, which is totally absent here. Instead it's a kind of pastiche on Alexandre Dumas' "The Count of Monte Christo", Jules Verne's favorite author, whom he venerated almost with some adoration, and much of the stuff in "Mathias Sandorf" gives the painful impression of almost being copied from the great Dumas novel. It is as if Jules Verne wanted to try something completely different from his ordinary line of interest and thus wrote an extensive political thriller (more than 500 pages), the main theme being the Hungarian oppression by the Austrians, while the film makes a completely different story of it all.
In the film we never learn anything about the circumstances, the nation is never defined, the geographical locations could be anywhere, and the one map in the film that could give a clue to some whereabouts is unidentifiable.
The novel includes some very spectacular scenes, especially one on the edge of Mount Etna in Sicily, which includes one of the scoundrels being thrown into the crater, much of the action takes place in Trieste, the action then shifts to Ragusa (Dubrovnik), then to Sicily and Catania, and then further on to Gibraltar, Ceuta and Libya, all meticulously described by Jules Verne who was very particular about getting all the facts right, but all accounts of that fabulous journey is missing here. The escape from the prison has been taken care of though with the same spectacular romantic surroundings and complications, only one prisoner surviving out of three, who vows to avenge the other two and ultimately succeeds. One of the villains, the banker Silas Toronthal, is made to turn very sympathetic though before he is brutally murdered by his own accomplice, which also isn't in the book, but the actor makes a good job of his character. The most spectacular scene in the film is a Mozart concert complete with a crowded audience, (his 40th symphony), which is interrupted by a scandal and pubic uprising. Mathias Sandorf, who is a count, ultimately teams up with two scoundrels, two merry brigands, one of them gets killed which he doesn't in the book, but they as characters complete the very few laughs of both the book and the film.
The film is pompous making a big thing of political freedom, but it does not live up to its ambitions. The music is good, but there is no cinematography, and the acting is theatrical or conventional. In an effort to make something better of Jules Verne's off-beat novel they only managed to miss the point even more.
