THE BLUE LAGOON
UK, 1948, 103 minutes, Colour.
Jean Simmons, Donald Houston, Noel Purcell, Cyril Cusack, James Hayter.
Directed by Frank Launder.
The Blue Lagoon Was a colourful English romantic drama of the late 40s. Jean Simmons had just appeared as Olivier's Ophelia and was at the beginning of a very successful career. She brings charm and strength to the central role of the shipwrecked girl. Donald Houston did not have such a successful career but was a strong character actor over many decades. Noel Purcell, Cyril Cusack and James Hayter bring strength to their brief roles.
The novel by Henry de Vere Stackpool was a famous one, slightly daring, in the early 20th century. Drawing on a background of Robinson Crusoe and the Swiss Family Robinson, the film contrives to have a little boy and girl shipwrecked on a desert island. They learn from the old castaway with them, how to survive. He dies. The film focuses eventually on the problems of adolescence and puberty, love and the birth and care for a child. The treatment is geared very much for an adolescent audience - Fijian locations, Geoffrey Unsworth's beautiful photography.
The remake by Randall Kleiser in 1979 makes the film rather American in style, retains the emphasis on romance and beauty, is a bit more explicit in its treatment of the problems of growing up.
1. The appeal of this film: adventure, a youth film, survival?
2. Indications of the title, the languid nature of an island paradise, the contrast with the action and survival drama?
3. The importance of the colour, the locations? The world of the children, the world of the adolescents, the world of adults?
4. The setting of the scene on the ship, the detail of the life on the ship, the funeral and the experience of the wise boy, the girl and her goals, the orphan boy and the responsibility of the sailors, the boy who disliked his father? A resourceful boy?
5. The impact of the explosion, the shipwreck, the boats, being lost in the fog, the boyish and girlish behaviour and Paddy trying to cope with this?
6. The drifting and the first sight of the island? Home for so many years? Learning to cope? Paddy and his trying to help the children, the hope with the ship, the irony of the rain, the pathos of his drinking and death? The effect on the children?
7. The tradition of people abandoned on islands, Robinson Crusoe background? The details of the skeleton, the notches, the passing of the years?
8. The idyllic aspects of age, their yearnings, their knowledge, the book of etiquette? Their attitudes and what they had learnt by themselves, the role of their memories?
9. The friendship, its times of clashes, the adventures of pearling, the encounters with monsters from the deep, the melodrama of their adventures?
10. The intrusion of the doctor and the sailor into their lives? The characterisation of these two villains? Their greed? Their pattern of civilisation, their lives, their hold over Michael and Em? As a means of escape from the island? Their being used? The crisis for them both? The aftermath of the crisis and their real understanding of each other?
11. Love growing into marriage? Coping with their child? The change that had come over them? Their desire to leave the island?
12. What had been their possibilities in life by the time they were found drifting in the boat? Survival? Growing into two adults? Their future? How much would be disillusionment of their dreams?
13. How wise a film in its human aspects, the portrait of growing up, children growing into adults, dreams of civilisation and the irony of its reality?
