Thunder Rock (1944)
David Charleston, once a world renowned journalist, now lives alone maintaining the Thunder Rock lighthouse in Lake Michigan. He doesn't cash his paychecks and has no contact other than the monthly inspector's visit. When alone, he imagines conversations with those who died when a 19th century packet ship with some 60 passengers sank. He imagines their lives, their problems, their fears and their hopes. In one of these conversations, he recalls his own efforts in the 1930s when he desperately tried to convince first his editors, and later the public, of the dangers of fascism and the inevitability of war. Few would listen. One of the passengers, a spinster, tells her story of seeking independence from a world dominated by men. There's also the case of a doctor who is banished for using unacceptable methods. David has given up on life, but the imaginary passengers give him hope for the future.
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The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.
Thunder Rock is the place where a jaded idealist played by Michael Redgrave has assigned himself in the true keepers of the lighthouse tradition. A curious place also he's put himself, miles away from the war he saw coming, on an island in the middle of Lake Michigan in the USA.There's a plaque on the wall of lighthouse which commemorates the sinking of a packet steamer Land of Lakes during a storm on the lake with all hands lost in 1849. To pass away the lonely hours at the lighthouse, Redgrave has recreated several of the deceased passengers as characters whom he converses with. Only the ship's captain Finlay Currie knows he's dead, the others just think they're stranded on his island waiting for a storm to clear.Redgrave's come to a personal crisis of sorts, the supervisors want him to take some overdue leave. The leave policy is there so people don't start making imaginary friends like because that's usually a ticket to the rubber room. And there's the real crisis of the oncoming World War which Redgrave tried to tell an uncaring public and its leaders about and now he's withdrawn into being the ultimate isolationist.On the night that the action of this play takes place, Redgrave's imaginary friends start giving some unexpected answers to questions and not something that his own mind creations would give out with. The ghosts if indeed that's what they were learn their fate and Redgrave learns his responsibility. And it's not on Thunder Rock.The play was put on by the Group Theater on Broadway in 1939 when the war was just beginning and it ran only 23 performances. The film added quite a bit to get it out of the living room of the lighthouse where all the action takes place on stage. Redgrave who made sensitive and principled characters a specialty in his career gives one of his best performances in Thunder Rock. James Mason is also in this film playing a real friend of Redgrave's who starts wondering about his sanity when Redgrave tells him about his imaginary group of dead friends off the Land of Lakes. The characters are deeply etched to make up for a rather static lack of plot.A British film set in Lake Michigan, who'd have believed it and also believed it was good.
This may not be the greatest film ever made and to those who don't like the lesson it teaches it may seem to be propaganda (a negative implication) but for those who are receptive and consider what the story tells and what is its intended purpose, it is a valuable lesson beautifully presented. We are faced with a similar perfect storm as I write this brief note and yet most people who are not directly engaged refuse to see what is happening and the inevitable consequences of such refusal. Like the Redgrave character, we think that a personal disengagement will be a solution but it is not and never can be. Courage then is the lesson learned at Thunder Rock and any film that teaches it is worthy and a film that teaches it well is especially worthy. It is our loss that today's movie makers lack the perspective to make such a film for us in our time but then, if one did, he might be in personal danger so it is easier for them to decline. Therefore we are left with an old film that preaches us to have courage against a different enemy but the lesson holds. Watch it and think how it resonates. More than a worthy film, a necessary reminder and a lesson to us all.
I saw this movie in 1942, when I worked for the War Department and had just enlisted in the Army Air Corps, so this might account for the strong memories I have of it.I was a little shocked that it seemed almost pure propaganda. However, it was clearly made for a British audience at a time when the nation was in imminent danger of invasion by the Nazis. Its message was never to give up hope.It opens with the hero being frightened by the spread of Fascism across Europe. He goes into a London movie house where the depressing newsreel is followed by a cartoon which the unthinking audience finds hilarious. Disgusted, he gives up and withdraws into himself. He becomes a sort of hermit and somehow gets a job as a lighthouse-keeper on the Great Lakes.Browsing through the lighthouse's log, he finds an account of a shipwreck. As he reads, the viewer notices that the lighthouse's central pole is now at an angle--a very clever hint of the transition to the fantasy now taking place. He is now on board the sinking ship and all is confusion and despair. But it turns out OK--the first example of the message (to the English) not to give up hope. There are several other such episodes including one about the doctor in Vienna who discovers that doctors not washing their hands is how the deadly childbirth fever infection is spread. A failure, he is laughed out of town. But a few years later his radical theory is proved correct. Another morale boost for the discouraged wartime English.I can't remember how the movie ends--but I've never forgotten the movie!
I saw Thunder Rock as a student in Toronto (Canada)when it came out in about 1942. Thought the plot has faded somewhat in my memory, the acting, the allegorical inferences and the very remarkable optical distortions that said far more than words--all of these have stayed with me for the sixty years since that time.I'd love to see it revived for viewing.