Lord of the Flies (1963)

Plenty to Like, Plenty to Dislike

Fanciful, disturbing, and wildly original, it announces the arrival of a fresh, bold voice in American cinema.

It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

Many have written of the stellar cast, the amazing cinematography, the brilliant direction, etc. And like any movie review, it's all subjective. This movie is remarkable. It is much of the above, and more. But it has its flaws.By necessity, the format of film requires a writer/director to abridge a book. If one were to film every "word" of the book, the result would be an incredibly long, and probably boring film. So of course, this film leaves much out. But what it does get, it gets right. It's stark, brutally direct and unforgiving.Having said that, I found parts of the direction lacking. Endlessly drawn-out shots of the sky, the beach, the jungle were distracting, as if the director was trying to slow down the story, and had me reaching for the fast-forward button. Some shots made little-to-no sense at all, while others were too quick, too short to truly grasp the situation.My biggest complaint was the score. I honestly couldn't figure out what Raymond Leppard was going for. Was he trying to evoke a feeling of loneliness? Isolation? Fear? Boredom? Whatever it was, it didn't work. Rather, it just annoyed. For example, throughout the movie the score kept returning to a single, tuneless melody played by a solo flute (or piccolo?). It wavered around, with no discernible rhythm or melody, as if someone was simply "making noise" on it. It was shrill and irritated in a nails-on-blackboard does.Overall, the movie shines as an example of honest filmmaking, despite its flaws. Next time, I'll just mute the sound and imagine the dialogue!

As a big fan of William Golding's 1954 novel, I was eager to see Peter Brook's 1963 film, as I knew that Golding himself had shown approval of it. In the midst of a school trip (or evacuation as the film makes clear), a plane crashes into the Pacific Ocean. The only survivors are the children. Ralph (James Aubrey) is a natural benevolent leader who gets the group together and decides the first order of business is to make a fire so that they can be rescued. Piggy (Hugh Edwards) is the overweight adviser to Ralph, who although represents reason, is often picked on. Jack Merridew (Tom Chapin) is the malevolent choir boy, who seems to care little about being rescued, and whose desires are hunting and having a cult of personality. Although the boys are productive at first, Jack soon turns most boys against Ralph's democratic practices and begins a new tribe on the island. Soon almost all boys turn against Ralph. The film has very little theme music, and often relies on long running takes to illustrate the story. Cinematography is excellent and the child actors really do a good job. The film follows the novel very carefully and faithfully adapts it to screen. I enjoyed both the book and the movie fully.

After a plane crash in the ocean, a group of British students reach an island. The boy Ralph (James Aubrey) organizes the other kids, assigning responsibilities for each one. When the rebel Jack (Tom Chapin) neglects the fire camp and they lose the chance to be seen by an airplane, the group split under the leadership of Jack. While Ralph rationalizes the survival procedures, Jack returns to the primitivism, using the fear for the unknown (in a metaphor to the religion) and hunger to control the other boys. His group starts hunting and chasing pigs, stealing the possession of Ralph's group and even killing people. When I saw the 1990 "The Lord of the Flies", I found the impressive story very scary since it shows the lost of innocence of children fighting to survive in a society without perspective and rules. My immediate association was with my and other Third World countries, where many children are abandoned by the Government in their poor communities, and without education, perspectives in life and laws, become very young criminals working in gangs of drug dealers and thieves. In this movie, it is exposed how primitive a kid can be without the authority and respect, and this sort of violence is in the headlines of our newspapers almost every day. I have never the chance of reading this visionary novel, but both movies are very similar and I believe that they are good adaptations, with a frightening study of characters and sociology. My vote is eight. Title (Brazil): "O Senhor das Moscas" ("The Lord of the Flies")

Simon: "Maybe there is a beast. What I mean is : maybe it's only us."Since I just finished reading the book last night, it felt natural for me to check out the movie. I decided with the older version as it is the one whose snapshots came up while I was searching for the cover of my book to feature in my book review.The movie starts with a series of black and white pictures over sound. We deduce from them that it is set in England, that a war, probably a nuclear war, has started and that kids are being evacuated by plane. We hear a crash. The next scene, we see two kids on a beach and they wonder if there are any adults left. They start by getting everyone's name. They find a shell in the sea, that the young boy who is only referred to as Piggy, informs them is a conch. In order to have everyone gather, Ralph blows the conch and they decide who should be the leader. While Ralph is soon elected leader, another boy, Jack, who lives only to hunt the wild pigs on the island, soon threatens the power of both the conch and Ralph.The film is a quite good adaptation. It is very faithful to the text and apart from two scenes, I couldn't really see many differences.I was annoyed by a few things however. First of all, I felt the music and sounds weren't fitting the atmosphere. I also think the scenes that lead up to a sort of communal frenzy among the boys were so frantic they lost all sense of realism. It simply didn't seem to fit. Last but not least, I think the acting was fairly poor. I understand that an ensemble cast of young boys is not the easiest thing to manage but a lot of overacting ensued which took away from the film's credibility.The movie, which was extensively cut, was a good telling of the book and I felt they did pick out the key scenes from it in order to form a compact, yet linear and understandable tale. When seeing a movie from a book you have read, it tends to be a great disappointment when some of your favorite scenes go missing or when you feel the movie isn't understandable as a whole because of some involvements cleared out in the book, but that didn't happen here.In many ways it reminded me of the French film La guerre des boutons (1962) but if had to recommend only one, I'd go with the French one. I think, even though Lord of the Flies' addresses far more serious cultural criticism than the, mostly, comedic relief of its French counterpart, the acting of the ensemble cast is far better in La guerre des boutons.I liked: Faithful to the book. The island. The Lord of the Flies scene.I disliked: The music and sounds. The acting.62/100 A good adaptation sadly stained by irritating (to me) quirks.Read more at: www.theordinaryreview.blogspot.com