SHARK'S TREASURE
US, 1975, 95 minutes, Colour.
Cornel Wilde, Yaphet Kotto, John Neilson, Cliff Osmond.
Directed by Cornel Wilde.
Shark’s Treasure is less about sharks than about treasure. This is a story about a charter skipper and a team who look for treasure – and have confrontations with sharks but also with escaped convicts. This makes it an action adventure and a pursuit film.
It was written and directed by Cornel Wilde. Wilde was a romantic lead in films of the 1940s including his Chopin in A Song to Remember. However, from the 1950s he became interested in directing as well with films like The Big Combo, Storm Fear and The Naked Prey.
1. The significance and tone of the title? The ambiguity? The real sharks and the criminal sharks?
2. What were audience expectations of this film? A shark film? A film about buried treasure? How well were these expectations fulfilled?
3. How well produced and filmed was the work? The use of colour, locations, underwater photography, music, the song about money, the editing etc.?
4. How good was the film as an adventure? The characters and their ruggedness, exciting sequences, suspense? How much was the film geared for masculine adventure audiences?
5. The film's theme of treasure and its attraction? Its hold on men, the achievement in finding treasure, motivations, greed, courage, skill? The risks to life? The in-fighting? The greed of criminals?
6. Why do audiences have interest in this kind of treasure adventure? How important is it for interest in the characters as well? How well was this achieved here?
7. How impressive a hero was Jim? An ageing, Cornel Wilde who also wrote and directed the film? The emphasis on his fitness and skill? His messages about smoking, drinking, unnecessary violence? His shrewdness? Yet his approach to others and misunderstanding them? His capacity for fighting, saving his crew? His relationship with Ron? What were his basic attitudes? Towards Ben and his attitudes towards others? How typical a modern American?
8. How did he contrast with Ron? A young man an the make? Eagerness and disappointment in not finding the treasure? Participation in the work? His dreams of a solid future? (The message here for a younger generation?) The disappointment when the pirate criminals came? What had he achieved by the end of the film?
9. Ben as a character? A skilful diver? Being black? What had he achieved by the end of the film?
10. The atmosphere of Mexico, the po1ice and the shooting, the bar, the deal with the barman, the daughter and her seduction for information etc.? Adventure ingredients? The importance of the convicts? What kind of men in themselves? Repellent? Violent? Sadistic? The threat to the treasure crew?
12. How well did the film make the transition from treasure adventure to convict thriller? The suspense moving to menace?
13. The character of Lobo? How skilfully was this character comunicated? His leadership, weakness, hold over the crew? Johnny? The nature of his attachnent to Johnny, sadism, the nature of his death?
14. Johnny as a paranoid? Lobo's influence, his brutal treatment, his decision to rebel, his running away from Lobo, the nature of his death?
15. How much insight went into the characterization of the criminals, the minor criminals also?
16. The theme of survival? How important was this on the ship, not provoking violence, using wits, escaping, the scene on the boat, on the island?
17. How skilful were the scenes of the escape and the sea?
18. The final fight as a climax for this kind of film, the comment on not shooting the Chinese criminal?
19. Comment on the shark sequences, the danger of the sharks, the way they were filmed, the fierceness, even breaking into the safety cage etc.? The risk to life and limb for treasure In such shark-infested waters?
20. The attention to detail of getting treasure from the bottom of the sea?
