Plot
The film begins with a special onscreen prologue introduced by broadcast journalist Edward R. Murrow, and featuring footage of an early science fiction/fantasy film by Georges Méliès, A Trip to the Moon (1902), which is based loosely on From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne. Included also is the launching of an unmanned rocket and footage of the earth receding.
Around 1872, an English gentleman Phileas Fogg (David Niven) claims he can circumnavigate the world in eighty days. He makes a £20,000 wager (equal to £1,324,289 today) with several skeptical fellow members of the Reform Club, that he can arrive back within 80 days before exactly 8:45 pm.
Together with his resourceful valet, Passepartout (Cantinflas), Fogg sets out on his journey from Paris via a hot air balloon. Meanwhile, suspicion grows that Fogg has stolen £55,000 (equal to £3,641,794 today) from the Bank of England so Police Inspector Fix (Robert Newton) is sent out by Scotland Yard to trail and arrest Fogg. Hopscotching around the globe, Fogg pauses in Spain, where Passepartout engages in a comic bullfight. In India, Fogg and Passepartout rescue young widow Princess Aouda (Shirley MacLaine) from being forced into a funeral pyre with her late husband. The threesome visit Hong Kong, Japan, San Francisco, and the Wild West. Only hours short of winning his wager, Fogg is arrested upon returning to London, by the diligent yet misguided Inspector Fix.
At the jail, the humiliated Fix informs Fogg that the real culprit was caught in Brighton. Though eventually exonerated of the charges, he has lost everything — except the love of the winsome Aouda. But salvation is at hand when Passepartout realizes the next morning that, by crossing the International Date Line, they have gained a day. There is still time to reach the Reform Club and win the bet. To the surprise of all waiting at the club, Fogg arrives just before the clock's chime at 8:45 pm. Aouda and Passepartout then arrive. Noticing Fogg's whole travel party has arrived, and noting the fact that a woman and a Frenchman have entered the hallowed British gentlemen's precinct, the Reform Club announces the completion of the journey and The End of the British Empire.
Read more about this topic: Around The World In 80 Days (1956 film)
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“We have defined a story as a narrative of events arranged in their time-sequence. A plot is also a narrative of events, the emphasis falling on causality. “The king died and then the queen died” is a story. “The king died, and then the queen died of grief” is a plot. The time sequence is preserved, but the sense of causality overshadows it.”
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)
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