Lord of the Flies (1963)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ 

Lord of the Flies (1963) – P. Brook

Aito was assigned to read William Golding’s 1959 novel for his Year 7 English class and when he finished, I located director Peter Brook’s film version on Kanopy and we watched it.  He felt it was quite faithful although the filmmakers naturally cut out some sequences from the book (and inexplicably the explanation of the title as well). The film starts when a bunch of English kids, having survived a plane crash, find themselves alone on a deserted tropical island (the film was actually shot in Puerto Rico).  I couldn’t help but think immediately of 7 Up! the documentary series that has followed a bunch of British kids from the early sixties until now (with films every seven years) – the actors in Lord of the Flies could easily be drawn from the same cohort as the “real” kids in the documentary series. So, would those real kids end up reverting to “primitive” tribal instincts as those in the film do, if they were similarly stranded on a deserted island?  That is Golding’s (and Brook’s) premise. The film, shot in gorgeous black and white, feels natural and almost unscripted. Of course, some of the kids are better actors than others. Piggy (Hugh Edwards) speaks with the determined emphatic and slow drawl of a young Alfred Hitchcock – we feel for him, as he is targeted by the stronger popular boys because of his weight and his glasses. Survival of the fittest perhaps but our empathy is strongly with the reasonable rational and perhaps weaker (less aggressive) kids. Brook and his team show us this world through the kids’ eyes (full of spectacle, especially once they light those torches and don their warpaint) but there is a harshness and cruelty here that is not for kids (even if it is characteristic of them, when left to their own devices). An indelible film, directed with an experimental eye but which never loses sight of the narrative.  

Panique (1946)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Panique (1946) – J. Duvivier

Michel Simon plays Monsieur Hire, an outsider, probably Jewish, who is suspected by his neighbours of committing a murder (which we know was really committed by a local thug played by Paul Bernard). When the thug’s girlfriend returns from prison, having taken the rap for him, she moves into M. Hire’s hotel and they become acquainted. He implies that he has evidence that ties the real murderer to the crime and she feigns an interest in him in order to get into his apartment. We learn his sad story (his wife left him for his best friend) and feel sorry for him when he falls for the girlfriend, Alice (Viviane Romance). Indeed, Alice also begins to feel sympathy for M. Hire – but not enough to stop her from planting evidence of the murder (the victim’s handbag) in his apartment, at the request of her lover. Once the evidence is found, the gangster and his friends wind up the community, already negatively predisposed against Hire, and soon a vigilante mob is formed. In this way, the film is not dissimilar from other films which tell how easy it is for malicious rumours to gain sway over a group (see also Fritz Lang’s Fury, 1936). Coming just after WWII in France, it isn’t hard to read the film as a grimly pointed commentary about those who collaborated.  But, as directed by Julien Duvivier, the film takes time to develop its central character (Hire) and dwells enough on Alice’s psychology to give the audience a pang of regret when she suffers her (deserved) fate. The plainly artificial sets harken back to Carné and Prévert’s poetic realism but this film is less noir than melodrama but none the worse for that.