Lord of the Flies (1963)

Simon: "Maybe there is a beast. What I mean is : maybe it's only us."

By Peter Brook
With James Aubrey, Tom Chapin and Hugh Edwards

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.