Lord of the Flies (1963 film)

Not to be confused with Lord of the Flies (1990 film).

Lord of the Flies
215px Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Peter Brook
Produced by	Lewis M. Allen
Written by	Peter Brook
Based on	Lord of the Flies by William Golding
Starring	James Aubrey Tom Chapin Hugh Edwards
Music by	Raymond Leppard
Cinematography	Tom Hollyman
Edited by	Peter Brook Gerald Feil Jean-Claude Lubtchansky
Distributed by	British Lion (UK) Continental Distributing (US)
Release dates	May 1963 (1963-05) (Cannes) August 13, 1963 (1963-08-13) (United States)
Running time	92 minutes
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English
Budget	$250,000

Lord of the Flies is a 1963 British film adaptation of William Golding's novel of the same name. It was directed by Peter Brook and produced by Lewis M. Allen. The film was in production for much of 1961 though the film was not released until 1963. Golding himself supported the film. When Kenneth Tynan was a script editor for Ealing Studios he commissioned a script of Lord of the Flies from Nigel Kneale, but Ealing Studios closed in 1959 before it could be produced.

The film is generally more faithful to the novel than the 1990 adaptation.

Plot

A group of British schoolboys, living in the midst of a war, are evacuated from England. Their airliner is shot down by briefly glimpsed fighter planes and ditches near a remote island.

The main character Ralph is seen walking through a tropical forest. He meets an intelligent and chubby boy, who reveals his school nickname was Piggy, but asks that Ralph not repeat that. The two go to the beach where they find a conch shell which Ralph blows to rally the other survivors. As they emerge from the jungle it becomes clear that no adults have escaped the crash. Singing is heard and a small column of school choir boys, wearing dark cloaks and hats, appearing to be walking in pairs, led by a boy named Jack.

The boys decide to appoint a chief. The vote goes to Ralph, and not Jack. Initially Ralph is able to steer the children (all of whom appear to be aged between about six and fourteen) towards a reasonably civilized and co-operative society. Only boys holding the conch are allowed to speak during meetings or "assemblies". The choir boys make wooden spears, further reinforcing their appearance as warriors within the group. Crucially Jack has a knife, capable of killing an animal.

The boys build shelters and start a fire using Piggy's glasses. With no rescue in sight, the increasingly authoritarian and violence-prone Jack starts hunting and eventually finds a pig. Meanwhile, the fire, for which he and his "hunters" are responsible, goes out, keeping them hidden from a passing airplane. Piggy chastises Jack, and Jack strikes him in retaliation, knocking his glasses off, and breaking one lens on the rocks. Ralph is furious with Jack. Soon some of the children begin to talk of a beast that comes from the water. Jack, obsessed with this imagined threat, leaves the group to start a new tribe, one without rules, where the boys play and hunt all day. Soon, more follow until only a few, including Piggy, are left with Ralph.

Events reach a crisis when a boy named Simon finds a sow's head impaled on a stick, left by Jack as an offering to the Beast. He becomes hypnotized by the head, which has flies swarming all around it. Simon goes to what he believes to be the nest of the Beast and finds a dead pilot under a hanging parachute. Simon runs to Jack's camp to tell them the truth, only to be killed in the darkness by the frenzied children who mistake him for the Beast. Piggy defends the group's actions with a series of rationalizations and denials. The hunters raid the old group's camp and steals Piggy's glasses. Ralph goes to talk to the new group using the still-present power of the conch to get their attention. However when Piggy takes the conch, they are not silent (as their rules require) but instead jeer. Roger, the cruel torturer and executioner of the tribe, pushes a boulder off a cliff and kills Piggy.

Ralph hides in the jungle. Jack and his hunters set fires to smoke him out, and Ralph staggers across the smoke-covered island. Stumbling onto the beach, Ralph falls at the feet of a naval officer who stares in shock at the painted and spear-carrying savages that the children have become, before turning to his accompanying landing party. A small boy tries to tell the officer his name but cannot remember it. The last scene shows Ralph sobbing as flames spread across the island.

Cast

• James Aubrey as Ralph
• Tom Chapin as Jack
• Hugh Edwards as Piggy
• Roger Elwin as Roger
• Tom Gaman as Simon
• David Surtees as Sam
• Simon Surtees as Eric
• Nicholas Hammond as Robert
• Roger Allan as Piers

Theme

As with Golding's book, the pessimistic theme of the film is that fear, hate and violence are inherent in the human condition – even when innocent children are placed in seemingly idyllic isolation. The realisation of this is seen as being the cause of Ralph's distress in the closing shots.

Charles Silver, Curator in the Department of Film at MoMA, wrote that the film is "about anarchy and how that thin veneer we wear of what we refer to as “civilization” is threatened by the attractive clarion call of bestiality and its accompanying hatred".

Production

Filming

The parents of those chosen are reported to have been provided copies of the novel, from which a commentary had been physically removed; those pages included describing the culmination of the hunt of a wild sow as an "Œdipal wedding night". Brook noted that 'time was short; we were lent the children by unexpectedly eager parents just for the duration of the summer holidays".

The film was shot entirely in Puerto Rico at Aguadilla, El Yunque and on the island of Vieques. The boys in the cast were all non-professional, had mostly not read the book, and actual scripting was minimal; scenes were filmed by explaining them to the boys, who then acted them out, with some of the dialogue improvised.. Life magazine journalist Robert Wallace visited them there and observed one of them amusing himself by feeding live lizards into the blades of a rotating fan. Wallace commented: "One could almost hear William Golding, 4,000 miles away in England, chuckling into his beard."

The 60 hours of film from the 1961 shoot was edited down to 4 hours, according to editor Gerald Feil. This was further edited down to a 100-minute feature that was shown at the 1963 Cannes Film Festival (May 9 to 22), but the cuts necessitated that new audio transitions and some dialog changes be dubbed into the film more than a year after shooting. The voice of James Aubrey, who played Ralph, had dropped three octaves and was electronically manipulated to better approximate his earlier voice, but it is still significantly different. Tom Chapin, who played Jack, had lost his English accent and another boy's voice was used to dub his parts. The U.S. distributor insisted the film be further edited to 90 minutes, so one fire scene and scenes developing the character Ralph were cut.

The NYC premiere of the film was attended by some of the original cast members followed by a photo shoot in Times Square (picture subsequently published in a Life Magazine article) and a party at Sardi's attended by others such as Zero Mostel.

In 1996 Peter Brook organised a reunion for the cast members for a film called "Time Flies". Brook was "curious to know what the years had done to his cast, and what effect the isolated months of filming had had on their lives". Although none seemed damaged by their time working on the film, Simon Surtees, one of a pair of twin brothers who played Samneric, "put his finger unerringly on the ethical dilemma. "The problem is that most of us are not trained artists, so I now believe Peter runs the risk of abandoning us to our fate, just as he did in 1961, when he plucked us from our schools and our homes, put us on the island, then cast us back to live our lives as if nothing would ever change."

Tom Gaman, who played Simon in Brook's film, remembered that "although I didn't think much about it at the time, in hindsight my death scene scares me. It was night, the spears--those wooden stakes--were quite real. We were excited, brandishing flaming sticks around a bonfire on the beach in a real storm. I really did emerge from the bushes into the center of a raging crowd, screamed in terror, was stabbed by boys with sharpened sticks, and staggered to the water".

Trivia

In the final scene the sailors rescuing the children are clearly marked as belonging to the Royal Navy frigate HMS Troubridge.

During the editing process Brook could not find the right effect for the sound of the dead pilot's parachute blowing in the wind. The book calls the sound a 'plopping noise'. Eventually the editor found the perfect sound by slowing down a recording of his cat purring.

Nicholas Hammond, the actor who played Robert, would later gain fame for playing Frederick in The Sound of Music

Song

The song, heard throughout the film, of the boys singing is Kyrie Eleison which, translated from Greek, means "Lord, have mercy". It is an expression used in a prayer of the Christian liturgy.

Reception

Critical response

The film received acclaim from critics. Based on 18 reviews collected by Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an overall approval rating of 100% from critics, with an average score of 8.3/10. However, it has a mixed to positive score from the audience, with 63%.

PopMatters journalist J.C. Maçek III wrote "The true surprise in Lord of the Flies is how little these child actors actually feel like 'child actors'. With few exceptions, the acting rarely seems to be forced or flat. This practiced, well-honed craft aids Brook’s vision of a fly on the wall approach that pulls the viewer into each scene."

Bosley Crowther wrote in the The New York Times that "the picture made from it by the writer-director Peter Brook is a curiously flat and fragmentary visualization of the original. It is loosely and jerkily constructed, in its first and middle phases, at least, and it has a strangely perfunctory, almost listless flow of narrative in most of its scenes".

Accolades

Peter Brook was nominated for the Golden Palm at the 1963 Cannes Film Festival.

The film was named one of the Top Ten Films of the year in 1963 by the National Board of Review.

Home media

The Criterion Collection released it on DVD and Blu-ray Disc in America and Canada. Janus Films also released the DVD in the UK.

External links

• Lord of the Flies at the British Film Institute's Screenonline
• Lord of the Flies at IMDb
• Lord of the Flies at AllMovie
• Lord of the Flies at Rotten Tomatoes
• Criterion Collection essay by Peter Brook