"The word impossible is only found in a dictionary of fools," proclaims Dr. Hans Reinhardt (Maximilian Schell), a mad genius who plans to plunge his spacecraft into a black hole in space-and emerge on the other side in possession of the ultimate secrets of the universe. Reinhardt is a sort of Captain Nemo of outer space, surrounded by cloaked, monkish robots who man the controls of his craft. "They look a bit medieval," he explains to the amazed American crew that has stumbled upon him, "but then I'm a romantic."
And so is The Black Hole, Walt Disney Productions' $20 million entry in Hollywood's go-for-broke science-fiction sweepstakes. Though its two gratingly cute robots come straight from "Star Wars," "The Black Hole" is really a throwback to the Disney fantasy films of the '50s. Science takes a back seat to the sorcery of the Disney art department, which has wrapped this Saturday-matinee thriller in some of the most deliciously imaginative special effects ever put on film. The Christmas comparison shopper has a clear-cut choice: "Star Trek's" 6 ounces of solemn TV metaphysics encased in $42 million worth of sleek hardware or the neo-Victorian, neo-Gothic, neo-B-movie nonsense of "Black Hole."
I'll take Disney any day, in spite of the fact that the dialogue belongs in a deflated cartoon balloon, that the ending is hopelessly murky and that the acting—by Schell, Anthony Perkins, Yvette Mimieux and especially Ernest Borgnine, Robert Forster and Joseph Bottoms—is abysmal. The magic of Peter Ellenshaw's production design disarms the critical mind: the child in me had a dandy time.
The Cygnus—Schell's renegade ship—is the centerpiece and the triumph of the movie: the setting itself provides suspense. Turning his back on a decade of NASA-inspired spaceships, Ellenshaw's romantic imagination has come up with a craft that combines the nineteenth-century elegance of the Crystal Palace with the high-tech jazziness of the Beaubourg museum. Seen in silhouette against the galaxy, its onion-shaped minaret may even suggest the skyline of St. Petersburg.
Laser Guns: Inside this eclectic playground, gardens grow, robots with laser guns practice intergalactic skeet shooting and the mad scientist entertains his captives at an antique dinner table under crystal chandeliers (the one disappointing set—it looks like a pretentious Hollywood boardroom). In the flamboyantly exciting finale, giant, flaming meteorites crash through the ship, and the survivors go hurtling into the mysterious black hole itself, where fashionably cosmic revelations abound. None of it makes the least bit of scientific sense, nor should it: "The Black Hole" is designed to be nothing more or less than the ultimate Disneyland ride. And quite a ride it is.
"This is my last picture," swears production designer/special-effects director Peter Ellenshaw, who was lured back to Hollywood from his windswept home in Kerry, Ireland, to begin work on "The Black Hole" in 1976. Now heading for retirement in his quiet "other life" as a respected landscape painter, the 66-year-old Ellenshaw can look back on a phenomenal 45-year film career. It began when he was hired as an assistant matte artist for Alexander Korda on such classics as "Things to Come," "The Four Feathers" and "The Thief of Baghdad." It flowered in a warm, 32-year association with the Disney studio and it culminated in an exhibit of his film wizardry at the Museum of Modern Art in New York last fall.
As a child in England, Ellenshaw wanted nothing but to draw, and after dropping out of school at 14, he lived for six years "in Dickensian misery" on the outskirts of London, copying Old Masters in watercolors while working as a grease monkey during the day. His skills were discovered by a neighbor, Pop Day, a famous matte artist of his time, who took him on as assistant on the Korda film. (Mattes are realistic paintings done on glass, against which films of actors and other parts of the set a projected; then both painting and film are rephotographed to create a new image.) Disney first hired Ellenshaw to work on "Treasure Island" and in 1953 brought him to Hollywood to do mattes for "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea." Ellenshaw's ideas for backlighting the famous Nautilus submarine led Disney to promote him to production designer as well as special-effects man.
Oscar Winner: "Walt was a first-class father figure," says Ellenshaw, whose own father died when he was 4. "The atmosphere under him was vibrant. To a lot of people it was frightning. He'd give you challenges and you thought, 'My God, I don't think I can handle this.' With his help you could handle everything." Under Disney's strong creative leadership, he did what he considers his best work on "Darby O'Gill and the Little People" and "Mary Poppins," for which he won an Oscar.
On "The Black Hole," under the new leadership of production chief Ron Miller, who is Disney's son-in-law, Ellenshaw was pretty much left to his own devices. Long before director Gary Nelson was hired, Ellenshaw had completed his designs for the Cygnus, inspired by a visit to the Goldstone tracking center in the Mojave Desert. "You come across this huge disc. What intrigued me was this beautiful, intricate steelwork tracing holding it together, silhouetted against the sky. There was my spaceship. I put the skeleton of the ship on the outside of it." And perhaps, with its Victorian echoes, there is more than a little of Ellenshaw's English childhood there, too. "In going more into the future, I went back into the past, didn't I?" he muses. The Ellenshaw touch will not retire with him: working beside him, as chief matte artist on "The Black Hole," was Harrison Ellenshaw, his 34-year-old son.
Copyright © 1979 Newsweek
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