Lord of the Flies

TCM's lineup for tomorrow (April 25) is a bunch of movies set on islands, and includes a movie that I happen to have on my DVR: the 1963 adaptation of the novel Lord of the Flies. That movie comes on at 2:30 PM.

Now, I think this is another of those movies where most people have at least a basic knowledge of the source material and story before going into it, because of the way in which the original book has gained a lasting sense of endurance. In a sequence that's done, like La jetée, with mostly still photos, we're shown how England is faced with another non-nuclear war and bombardment from the air as in World War II. This leads to the evacuation of children not only from the big cities, but from the country itself to places abroad. One of the flights carrying a large group of boarding school students, however, is hit by a missile somewhere over the Pacific.

We now head to the live action, and discover that two boys have survived the crash. One is Ralph, while the other is a chubby, bescpectacled, and presumably more intellectual boy who was given the nickname Piggy at school. Here, Piggy does something stupid, which is to tell Ralph that everybody gave him the nickname Piggy, rather than give out his real name. Eventually, Ralph and Piggy come across a conch shell, which can be blown to produce a distinctive sound that any other possible survivors can hear. Sure enough, there are other survivors, but they're all young boys like Ralph and Piggy.

Ralph and Piggy bring the group together to try to figure out what to do next, until they hear voices and find another group walking along the beach, wearing not only the standard school uniform but robes that seem to mark them as part of a choir, which makes you wonder how this group of students knew each other but nobody from either of the two groups knew the people in the other group. Things need to be done to figure out whether they're on an island and whether there might be any civilization to save them, along with building shelter and finding out whether there's any possible food on the island. That involves electing a leader.

The election, such as it is, immediately devolves into a sort of tribal conflict, as the choir kids all vote for their leader Jack, while the other boys outvote them and select Ralph as the leader. Jack is none too pleased with this and, having a knife, immediately sets out turning his clique into hunters by fashioning spears to hunt for any possible meat. They find wild boars and something that suggests there might be a "beast" on the island. This, combined with deteriorating relations between the two cliques, leads to despotism and tragedy....

William Golding's original story is a parable on how it doesn't take much to destroy civilized norms, and that's something the movie version does quite well. Director Peter Brook, a stage director by training, gave the child actors, all non-professionals at the time, copies of the book and basically had the kids improvise the action which he would then edit together. I had the fear that this would make the editing extremely choppy at some point, but surprisingly, that doesn't happen, and the movie mostly works.

This version of Lord of the Flies is definitely worth watching. There was another version made around 1990 that I haven't seen.