Vast panoramas on a huge screen, but visually weak

I didn't 'dislike' this film. I like the genre, spies and submarines. But watching it again today on TCM in letterbox with a very good restored print and uncut/uninterrupted, I was underwhelmed. I also saw it in the Honolulu Cinerama theater, on the widescreen for which it was made, in initial release.

Considering what went into it, it's almost Plan 9 from the North Pole. Start with the static title sequence backgrounds. No action, suspense, emotion, nothing to pull viewers in. When the titles are over, the trend continues. It was ~45 minutes into the film before a shot was taken with other than a static, locked-down camera, and few shots had any motion in them throughout, either by the camera or by the actors.

Excellent actors all appear wooden in ISZ. McGoohan is the only spark, and Borgnine's Russian accent is credible, but everyone else is stiff, flat.

In the parachute scene, even on a modest television it's obvious those parachutes were no larger than a foot. But at least they were moving.

The climactic confrontation scene was as obviously shot on a soundstage as the Star Trek TV show was. The wind is heard howling, but the snow never moves, the actors' hair never moves, even their fur parkas never move. And mostly, again, neither does the camera or the actors. They just stand there reading lines. Probably why they didn't use fans to simulate wind, it would have made it too apparent they were standing in styrofoam.

For fans of the film, all these things obviously don't detract from its entertainment value. But with huge stars, the roadshow format and 70mm anamorphic photography, the huge budget and MGM's pedigree behind it, it just sits there. It could have been a slide show and not looked much different. The most money I've ever seen spent doing almost nothing visually. It could have been a radio show, fer gawdsake!