Spine #43 - Lord of the Flies (1963)
Welcome to Lord of the Flies, the book where everything's made up, and the rules don't matter. That's right the rules are useless, just like holding the conch! Of course, the film is based on the 1954 book by Nobel Prize-winner William Golding. The film is directed by Peter Brook, a director of stage plays and Royal Shakespeare Company productions. He chose to use real schoolboys as actors in this film, giving the prospective children's parents the book to read to see if they wanted their children involved. All the children chosen decided to take the chance to film. They went to Puerto Rico to film the movie, so in a way they filmed on a tropical island anyway. The kids and production crew lived in an abandoned factory whilst filming the low-budget film. The film ended up receiving very positive reviews, and the director was nominated for the Golden Palm at the Cannes Film Festival that year.
I'm going to assume everyone knows what the book is about, as it's one of the most famous books for high-schoolers to read all around the world. I have never read the book, but know very much about it having read excerpts, having it be my favorite author's favorite book he didn't write, and having seen this very well-adapted film. The film, like the book, is raw, powerful, and rife with allegory. As stated earlier, Peter Brook was a director of stage plays mostly, having done only one or two filmed versions of plays before this. So he knew how to work on a small budget. The film was made for $250,000 with minimal crew, and in some ways I long for the days of small budget films. They may not be able to give you great special effects, but they tend to be more powerful when done by a great cast and crew. Seeing as the boys in this film had not been in films before, they do a great job. Some of the lines by some of the children can seem stilted as you may hear from a high school play, but those are few and far between.
This title is one of the first titles Criterion put out on DVD back in the late 1990s. The original DVD was considered great back when it came out, as it had a commentary track, home movies shot during the production, the trailer, a deleted scene, novel excerpts read by author William Golding, outtakes, and an excerpt from a 1975 show about Peter Brook's career in the theater. Then a few years ago, Criterion released a DVD with just the film included at a lower price. This new edition, which came out this July, has all the previous special features plus a new interview with the cameraman Gerald Feil, an interview with Peter Brook done in 2008, and best of all a 1980 interview with the author William Golding. He was pretty much a hermit in the last 30 years of his life, so this is a treat. There's also a great 7-minute collection of footage taken from 8-mm cameras given to the child actors to document their stay on the island accompanied by an essay written and read by Tom Gaman who played Simon in the film. The new edition also is presented in uncompressed monaural sound for the first time, as well as being struck from a new 4K digital film transfer, which makes the film sound and look better than ever.
I have not yet had time to listen to the commentary on this disc, though I can confirm that it's the same one that was on the 1999 disc, which was in turn originally used on the 1994 laserdisc. I've heard that it's a great commentary for those interested in the documentary-like filmmaking used during production, and for those interested in differences from the book. The home movies from the production are also interesting to see, as they show small scenes they decided to leave out of the finished film including, with the longer deleted scene, scenes that show how Ralph and Jack were not immediately enemies, but had an almost husband and wife relationship in that they both had different roles looking after all the others. In the finished film, they are not friendly towards each other even from the beginning. The 1980 interview with author Golding is a fascinating watch. He talks about how he grew up, his time in WWII, writing the book, and his feelings towards it's success.
This may not be the crown jewel of the Criteron Collection, but it's a great adaptation of the novel, it's considered a classic, and it has many special features that make it worth the $30 is sells for on Amazon.com. If you wait for the November sale, you can get the blu-ray for $20 at Barnes and Noble. Or you can get the DVD for about 5 bucks less. At any rate, see the film.
*Please note that there's a bit of child nudity in the film. I know a lot of people freak out at that. It's completely non-sexual, very innocent. It's not against the law as many believe. Only sexualized nudity is. Just thought I'd point that out for the less law-savy types.
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