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The Blue Lagoon (1949 film)
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Wikipedia article
'The Blue Lagoon' is a 1949 British coming-of-age romance and adventure film directed and co-produced by Frank Launder (with Sidney Gilliat) and starring Jean Simmons and Donald Houston. The screenplay was adapted by John Baines, Michael Hogan, and Frank Launder from the 1908 novel 'The Blue Lagoon' by Henry De Vere Stacpoole. The original music score was composed by Clifton Parker and the cinematography was by Geoffrey Unsworth.
The film tells the story of two young children shipwrecked on a tropical island paradise in the South Pacific. Emotional feelings and physical changes arise as they grow to maturity and fall in love. The film has major thematic similarities to the Biblical account about Adam and Eve.
Plot
In 1841, 8-year-old Emmeline Foster and 10-year-old Michael Reynolds, two British children, are the survivors of a shipwreck in the South Pacific. After days afloat, they are marooned on a lush tropical island in the company of kindly old sailor Paddy Button. Eventually, Paddy dies in a drunken binge, leaving Emmeline and Michael alone. They survive solely on their resourcefulness and the bounty of their remote paradise.
Eight years later, in 1849, the now-adult couple live together in the island paradise, fish, and collect "beads" from the shellfish in the surrounding lagoon. One day, a ship arrives carrying Doctor Murdoch and James Carter, two British men, who are intimated to have fled as criminals from civilization. Surprised to find the couple on the island, Doctor Murdoch soon realizes that Michael collects valuable pearls without knowing their true worth. While Murdoch attempts to trick Michael into getting him a bounty of pearls, Carter tries to kidnap Emmeline and escape. Murdoch and Carter kill each other on the boat, and Michael and Emmeline vow to never attempt to leave the island again. They marry, and during a tropical storm, a child, Paddy, is born.
In 1852, Emmeline is reminded of the outside world and wants to leave the island. She fears for their child if Michael and she should die. Michael gives in to her pleading and they pack a small boat and leave the island. Becalmed in mid-ocean, they succumb to exposure. They are found by a British ship, but the film leaves their fate ambiguous, showing only that Paddy remains alive in the small boat.
Cast
* Jean Simmons as Emmaline Foster
* Donald Houston as Michael Reynolds
* Susan Stranks as Emmaline (younger)
* Peter Rudolph Jones as Michael (younger)
* Noel Purcell as Paddy Button
* James Hayter as Dr. Murdock
* Cyril Cusack as James Carter
* Nora Nicholson as Mrs. Stannard
* Maurice Denham as Ship's Captain
* Philip Stainton as Mr. Ansty
* Patrick Barr as Second Mate
* Lyn Evans as Trotter
* Russell Waters as Craggs
* John Boxer as Nick Corbett
* Bill Raymond as Marsden
Production history
The film was an adaptation of a novel that had been filmed in 1923. However, it was the first notable adaptation.
Herbert Wilcox bought the rights to the novel in 1935 and announced he would make it as part of a slate of films. It was going to be shot in color in Honolulu.
He did not make the film, though, and sold the rights to Gainsborough Pictures at the recommendation of Frank Launder, who always admired the novel. Gainsborough announced the film in 1938 as part of a slate of 10 films. The stars were to be Michael Redgrave and Margaret Lockwood, who had just appeared in Gainsborough's 'The Lady Vanishes'; Will Fyffe was to co-star. In 1939, it was announced Gainsborough would make the film as a co-production with 20th Century Fox and that Lockwood would co-star with Richard Greene, under contract to Fox. Plans to make the film were postponed due to the war.
The project was reactivated after the war and announced in 1946 with Frank Launder attached to direct. Extensive location searches were undertaken before deciding to make the movie in Fiji.
Plans to make the film were postponed due to Britain's currency difficulties, but eventually plans were reactivated.
The evil traders were borrowed from the second sequel to the source novel for this film and are not part of the original novel.
Casting
Jean Simmons was attached to the project at an early stage, due to her success in 'Great Expectations' (1946).Donald Houston was selected as the male lead over 5,000 applicants, 100 of whom were screen-tested.
Filming
The film was shot on location in Fiji, Yasawa Islands,"Jean Simmons Goes Native", cover story, 'Illustrated' magazine 15 January 1949 and at Pinewood Studios, Iver Heath, Buckinghamshire, England.In December, a light plane carrying Leslie Gilliat, the producer and brother of Sidney Gilliat, crashed into a river near Suva. Both Gilliat and the pilot escaped unharmed.
Simmons left England in November, spent some time in Australia, and then travelled to Fiji. Some doubt arose that she would be allowed into Fiji, as she was only 18 and the Fijian colonial regime was contemplating a ban on people under 19 into the country as a precaution against polio being introduced.
Huston and Simmons narrowly escaped injury in Fiji when their car overturned.
The bulk of filming in Fiji took place on the Yasawa Islands. Storms caused shooting to take three months.
Reception
'The Blue Lagoon' was the seventh-most popular film at the British box office in 1949. According to 'Kinematograph Weekly', the 'biggest winner' at the box office in 1949 Britain was 'The Third Man' with "runners up" being 'Johnny Belinda', 'The Secret Life of Walter Mitty', 'The Paleface', 'Scott of the Antarctic', 'The Blue Lagoon', 'Maytime in Mayfair', 'Easter Parade', 'Red River', and 'You Can't Sleep Here'.
It made a profit of 40,300. Most of the film's earnings came from abroad.
Other versions and sequel
* The novel was adapted into a motion picture by a Hollywood studio (Columbia Pictures) for the first time in a version that was released in 1980 starring Brooke Shields and Christopher Atkins. The updated version, directed by Randal Kleiser, included nudity and sexual content, although not as much as the book. According to Kleiser himself, it was the book and not the 1949 film that inspired his version of the story. That version was followed in 1991 by the sequel 'Return to the Blue Lagoon', starring Milla Jovovich and Brian Krause. Although the sequel bears a strong similarity to the 1980 film, it bears little resemblance to Stacpoole's second novel, 'The Garden of God'. The pearl-greedy traders do not appear in Stacpoole's original novel. However, in Stacpoole's third novel, 'The Gates of Morning', a pair of sailors attack the people of a nearby island for pearls after seeing a woman wearing a double pearl hair ornament, as Emmaline does in the 1949 film.
* A "contemporary remake" of 'The Blue Lagoon' was made for television in 2012. Called 'Blue Lagoon: The Awakening', it depicts two contemporary teenagers (played by Indiana Evans (Emmaline Robinson) and Brenton Thwaites (Dean McCullen). The male lead from the 1980 film, Christopher Atkins, appears in this film as one of the teachers on the shipborne field trip where Emma and Dean are lost at sea and end up on an island.
See also
* State of nature
References
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