LORD OF THE FLIES - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Golding on film Shines on Criterion BLU-RAY

Lord of the Flies (1963) *****
Dir. Peter Brook
Starring: James Aubrey, Tom Chapin, Hugh Edwards

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Some movies just stay with you forever. You can't shake them out of your memory banks and when you see them again, they feel as fresh and vital as they once were - in some cases, even more so - especially if your first helping was in childhood and subsequent screenings were spread out over different periods of your life. Peter Brook's extraordinary 1963 film adaptation of William Golding's immortal novel Lord of the Flies is just such a film.

My first viewing was as a child on television at some point in the late 60s - at nine or ten years of age. The movie had such a profound effect upon me. This, of course was during a time when kids were allowed all manner of toys that replicated guns of many kinds and "war", "cops and robbers", "cowboys and indians" were frequent play amongst young boys. Here, though, was a film, that at the time, featured kids my own age - some a bit younger, others a bit older. Even with British accents (not uncommon on Canadian TV back then anyway as British programming was considered equal to indigenous Canadian programming), the movie spoke directly to myself and so many friends. The difference is that the on-screen play-acting was in the context of a boys' adventure set on an island. Even more telling for us was the fact that the games got deadly and when they did, the kids in the movie couldn't pick themselves up and continue playing - they were dead and gone.

The movie was so profound I ended up getting a paperback copy at my local Coles bookstore - a yellow cover with a photograph of the chubby young "Piggy"(Hugh Edwards), holding a conch and staring up, squinting into the blazing sun - and I read it voraciously and many times after. There was, after all, no other way to see the movie again in those pre-homevideo/cable TV days and the William Golding book proved very readable for most kids at the time and delivered any number of indelible moments to remind one of the movie, but also flesh out what was already a compelling story. I didn't see the movie again until I was 14 years old when the book was taught in Grade 9. After all the lectures and class discussions and assignments were done, our Language Arts teacher screened the film in the classroom - on actual 16mm via the trusty Bell and Howell movie projector which had to be stopped and rethreaded for each of the film's three reels. At that point, the study of the book and movie took on added resonance since by that point, Social Studies for kids included history lessons involving the World Wars as well as various battles involving the colonial periods of Canada. Though the Vietnam War was now in our collective as-it-happened consciousness, it seems odd, in retrospect, that the nightly news footage of carnage in the jungles of Vietnam played no role in the teaching of the book or movie, but I vaguely recall making note of this to myself at the time anyway.

Luckily, the film became quite an accessible work over the years and it was a movie that I saw many times at various stages throughout the 70s and 80s when I eventually acquired my own 16mm projectors and gained access to free movies from the local film exchanges (due to my youthful employment in the exhibition business) and throughout various phases of home entertainment formats including Beta, VHS, Laserdisc and eventually a great Criterion Collection DVD.

Now, however, the film appears in all its original glory in the sumptuous new Criterion Collection Blu-Ray. The story of a group of British boys marooned on an uninhabited island and their eventual regression to various stages of savagery for survival and control of power and resources seems as engaging, thrilling and powerful as it did when I first saw it. The performances of the children, the stunningly realistic black and white photography, the overall mise-en-scene which veers from neo-realist to classical to expressionistic and back again to neo-realism are all powerful attributes that contribute to a work that has not dated in the least and politically, feels as vital today as it did then - even more so.

The film's value as entertainment is unquestionable, but as a tool for teaching and discussion - especially if used in conjunction with the study of Golding's novel - has considerable virtues in a world continually torn by war, strife, unrest, terrorism and even gang warfare amongst inner city youth.

The new Criterion Collection Blu-Ray is a masterwork of the medium and offers several elements that will enhance the film. The exquisite new restoration and transfer of the picture and sound yield a movie that looks, frankly, like it could have been made yesterday. Its power in terms of story also feels incredibly modern. The first-rate extra features provide a great deal of background on the making of the film that the new Blu-Ray is valuable for both fans and scholars. It's also a must-own item for all burgeoning filmmakers as it details the remarkable manner in which the film was made. Its financial resources were, even when adjusted for inflation, far below what first-time filmmakers can acquire even now and Brooks' approach is so phenomenally sound that there's much to lean about the process of movie-making.

Universality is ultimately what defines classic work. This is doubly true for the Criterion Collection Blu-Ray which not only presents a genuinely great picture, but a bevy of materials to flesh out the entire experience so that it stands as a classic of the home entertainment medium itself.

"The Lord of the Flies" is available on Blu-Ray via the visionary Criterion Collection. It's a must-own title. Whatever you do, avoid the dreadful Harry Hook film adaptation. The Criterion version includes the following items: New, restored digital transfer (box set edition); new, restored 4K digital film transfer, supervised by editor and cameraman Gerald Feil, ASC (two-DVD and Blu-ray editions), with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition, Audio commentary featuring director Peter Brook, producer Lewis Allen, director of photography Tom Hollyman, and Feil, Audio recordings of William Golding reading from his novel Lord of the Flies, accompanied by the corresponding scenes from the film, Deleted scene, with optional commentary and Golding reading, Interview with Brook from 2008 (two-DVD and Blu-ray only), Collection of behind-the-scenes material, including home movies, screen tests, outtakes, and stills, Excerpt from a 1980 episode of The South Bank Show featuring Golding (two-DVD and Blu-ray only), New interview with Feil (two-DVD and Blu-ray only), Excerpt from Feil’s 1973 documentary The Empty Space, showcasing Brook’s theater method, Living “Lord of the Flies,” a piece composed of never-before-seen footage shot by the boy actors during production, with new voice-over by actor Tom Gaman, Trailer, PLUS: An essay by film critic Geoffrey Macnab (two-DVD and Blu-ray only) and an excerpt from Brook’s autobiography The Shifting Point, New cover by Kent Williams (two-DVD and Blu-ray editions); new cover by Olga Krigman (box set edition)

PART II of GREG KLYMKIW'S GUIDE: How to raise your child with the highest degree of cinema literacy!

IF YOU HAVEN'T READ PART ONE YET, CLICK HERE

In this edition of "How To Make Your Child Cinema Literate" you'll see why and how classic product (like that of Walt Disney), will instil a high degree of cinema literacy within your child, thus arming the happy toddler with the supreme taste it'll require to take out every inferior child within the sphere of its peers. For example, Disney's immortal SONG OF THE SOUTH, is difficult to acquire nowadays because it's been unfairly treated with pariah-like status by narrow-minded politically correct fascists. They myopically refuse to acknowledge that children learn so much more about the history of our world (AND art) when they're presented with unexpurgated and CONSTANT exposure to materials that display the highest degrees of aesthetic excellence, yet often represent perspectives which. in contemporary society are indeed no longer acceptable. The bottom line, dearest reader, is that your child will not become a lemming if YOU aren't a lemming yourself. So read on, learn and apply with fortitude and no shame.

PART II

How To Make Your Child Cinema Literate

Commentary and Guide by Greg Klymkiw

If you don't want your child to become a Philistine, herewith as promised is PART TWO of the handy-dandy Klymkiw Film Corner treatise on coaching select parents and their even more select children to ensure the utmost level of cinema literacy in one's progeny. I realize that most of you can't cut the mustard, and though I bear you no ill will or malice, it's important to avoid eventual heartache and just give up now if you're one of those miserable cretins who are beneath those who have the ability to positively take from this advice and make the most of their children's futures. For you who are, indeed of a superior persuasion, you're in the right place. Here you'll find tips, tricks and some viewing suggestions that allowed MY own child to choose the ideal fork in the road.

And maybe, just maybe, yours too.

In the parlance of Michael Haneke: ROTFLMFAO!

SILENT, 2-strip & 3-strip TECHNICOLOR and B&W - ONLY

1. Pre-birth and Toddler Years

Before your child is even born, there are two important things you must do. First of all, place the mother of the child in front of your home entertainment system and screen all the acceptable motion pictures - repeatedly if need be, since this will also be beneficial to the carrier of your seed. If possible, the Mother's belly should be as close to the monitor as possible. This might not work for those who use wall-mounted monitors and/or massive pull-down screens, but do your best. (A well-placed ladder could work wonders here.)

Secondly, prepare viewing lists for the first 2-to-3 years of the child's life. For home viewing, nothing on my list went beyond the release date of the mid-1960s and most were well before that date. Keep in mind that the list must be used as strictly as possible, but I do allow some leeway if the list is used as a springboard to show the child contemporary work inspired by the directors in question.

If, for example, you're going through a period where you're screening an abundance of Warner Brothers gangster films, I'd be delighted to hear that you also screened some select Martin Scorsese pictures for your toddler - notably Mean Streets and Goodfellas. My own child was especially enamoured with the latter title, so I screened it for her repeatedly, BUT made sure to ALWAYS sprinkle said screenings with palate-cleansers like White Heat, The Roaring Twenties, City For Conquest, Scarface (the Howard Hawks version, obviously) and The Public Enemy.

After screening THE PUBLIC ENEMY, it was especially delightful seeing the child at age 2, slicing a variety of citrus fruits and attempting, like Mr. Cagney, pictured above, to grind them into the face of her mother. You, like I, MUST gently chastise the child by saying, "Now, now, your Mommy isn't Mae Clarke."

At the end of the day, though, I always made sure that a good many of the films were silent and if they were "talkies", I favoured  those that were shot in monochrome (black and white for those of the uninitiated persuasion).

John Ford's HOW GREEN WAS MY VALLEY is a GREAT movie to show your children as early in their lives as you possibly can (and then repeat viewings every 6 months or so until they begin choosing it themselves as a movie to watch repeatedly). It's also a wonderful film to discuss composition, lighting and overall mise-en-scene with your kids since it might well be one of the most gorgeously photographed B&W movies ever made. Its cinematographer was the immortal 7-time Oscar nominee and 3-time Oscar winner Arthur Charles Miller.

The only colour films on this list (save for contemporary exceptions noted above) are choice classics photographed in original two-or-three-strip Technicolor.

David O. Selznick's GONE WITH THE WIND is a perfect movie to begin showing your child as early as possible. It's replete with one shot after another that will allow you to examine and explain to your child why real Technicolor was and still is better than any other colour film stock, but that sadly, this process was abandoned many years ago.

NEVER discriminate with respect to genre - musicals, drama, comedy, horror, western, romance, documentary, neorealism - all are fine so long as they stay within the aforementioned parameters. Remain true to your lists with only minor variants that are mere springboards from whatever is on them.

RABBIT EARS ONLY

2. Broadcast Television in Moderation

If you must have broadcast television available, do NOT under any circumstance allow cable television in the home. Use rabbit ears ONLY and make sure you set the channel changer to only carry programming like Teletubbies. When the child is asleep, I highly recommend you fire up a dubie and view Teletubbies all by your lonesome - alone, mind you - no need to corrupt your child. Other people's miserable children will do a good job in the corruption department. (A constant challenge to the bearer of superior parenting skills.)

TELETUBBIES 4 ALL!!!

There really are only two acceptable broadcast choices:

(A.) TVO (educational TV in Ontario - if your province does not have educational TV, you lose and if you're American, PBS is not much of a substitute for the excellence and superiority of Canadian public EDUCATIONAL television, but it will have to do I'm afraid and if you're one of my ridiculously huge number of readers in Europe, I know most of you DO have excellent public broadcasting of all kinds).

A JUBILEE OF CBC

(B.) CBC (in Canada, this is the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, our national public television network - however, since my dear cousin Slawko Klymkiw stopped being the Head of Programming after he got an un-requested ass-fucking for the top-job, the programming became shittier and shittier due to - ahem - "visionaries" - so it's much harder these days, save for some exceptions, to recommend this option, and for my American readers, you're pretty much fucked and my European readers, you already know the score, so go for it).

SIR NATURE BOY TO YOU!

Programming choices in Canada for the aforementioned can ONLY be early morning Children's programming, documentaries (preferably "nature" docs - others are fine, but kids fucking LOVE animals, go figure) and extremely select dramatic shows. Programming choices for Americans are nil, though PBS will do if you narrow the choices to nature and select British mystery series. And, uh, you Europeans can pretty much let anything play in your home that's on your publicly owned networks.

3. What movies can your nippers see

In movie theatres, take them to everything and anything (except contemporary Disney, though selective Pixar titles are fine). Screw babysitters. Children's admission prices are free up until two years old (but if you shove a baby bottle in the child's mouth and caution them to NEVER talk, you can stretch the freebies out until they're four years of age). Also, never buy anything at the cinema, just sneak in your own beverages and munchies and if you're really smart, it's not impossible to scope out free or reasonable parking. The myth of how much it could cost you to go to the movies is just that - a myth. 

Censorship is, of course, verboten.

That said, toddlers and pre-teens might be better off if you chose not to screen the following titles: 

THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST
Probably NOT a Good Idea 2 Show 2 Kids #1

SALO: THE 120 DAYS OF SODOM
Probably NOT a Good Idea 2 Show 2 Kids #2

NEKROMANTIK
Probably NOT a Good Idea 2 Show 2 Kids #3

THE LION KING
Probably NOT a Good Idea 2 Show 2 Kids #4

4. Animation: To show or not to show?

Animation poses a special challenge since the bad stuff is REALLY awful, yet all little nippers love cartoons - they really, really do and most importantly you cannot leave animation out if your goal is to boost their cinema literacy. Well, don't fret. That's why I'm here, folks.

The following animation is acceptable for your child:

Anything by the Fleischer Brothers - includes Popeye, Betty Boop and their many one-offs, the Somewhere in Dreamland-styled Talkartoons

Anything by Jan Švankmajer

Anything by the Brothers Quay

Anything by Miyazaki/Studio Ghibli

Any Anime & Manga, but skip pictures involving demons with 20-foot-long penises chasing after pre-teen girls. Anime has tons of violent sexual imagery, so you might wish to pass on anything featuring rape. (For live-action drama - Deliverance and A Clockwork Orange are obvious exceptions to this rule. They're movies all kids must see!)

PART I of GREG KLYMKIW's Two-Part Guide: "How to raise your child to be cinema literate"

How To Raise Your Child To Be Cinema Literate - PART I

By Greg Klymkiw

I'm proud to say that at the age of 18 months, the first movie my daughter ever saw in her life was the thrilling 1963 fantasy-adventure film Jason and the Argonauts (directed by Don - One Million Years B.C. - Chaffey and featuring the jaw-dropping stop-motion effects of the legendary Ray Harryhausen). The second movie during this momentous DVD double feature at home, was none other than It (1927) that delightful, bubbly silent romance starring Clara Bow.

Do you see a pattern forming? No? Are you, perchance, a fucking moron? Can you, as an adult (who should know better) not see that one movie is sans sterile digital special effects, but is instead created with hand-crafted models animated one frame at a time by human beings who must painstakingly move, light and compose the shots whilst meticulously maintaining all the levels and continuity during the gruelling PHYSICAL process of rendering the models on FILM to life? Have you, like some gibbering gibbon, been unable to grasp the simple fact that the other film was in black and white and SILENT, save for the organ accompaniment grafted onto the track of sound to reproduce what it might have been like to see the movie on a huge standard-frame screen, projected onto it from highly explosive nitrate stock in a massive 2000-seat picture palace with some musically gifted genius playing to the images before him? I thought not. THAT, my friend, is why YOUR child will become a cinema-illiterate idiot with a huge mushroom lodged in its skull instead of a cerebellum.

He, who eyes the target of his utter DISGUST

Looking DOWN upon the target of DISGUST

Need I remind you what Roman Polanski as Trelkovsky said to the whining brat who'd lost his toy boat during that seminal moment in The Tenant? You don't?

Idiot!

Just before slugging the little bugger across the face he horked out the following vitriol: "Filthy little brat!" with a delivery ONLY Polanski could pull off - "FEELTHEE, LEETOL BRAT!" (The last word spat out like a snake's venom with the deliciously rolled Eastern European "R").

BABY BOTTLES of GRAPE JUICE & PAMPERS

The first movie my daughter ever saw in a movie theatre not long after the aforementioned DVD double-bill was Peter Weir's gorgeously directed historical swashbuckler Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003). Let me tell you: The child was transfixed. Of course, as courteous parents we made sure she was armed with baby bottles full of grape juice and disposable diapers to both keep her quiet and to deal with any natural, shall we say, expunging of the liquid matter processed through her bladder (the latter keeping the child from insisting upon endless trips to the bathroom and ruining the experience for herself, her parents and other patrons - HINT! HINT! To all you idiots who drag your kids to the cinema and don't do likewise). This all, I must add, transpired during a late screening time after a full day of activity, no less. When the movie was over, she wanted to see another.

Great Musical from an unsung American auteur and a film my daughter fell in love with, using Doris Day's spirited rendering of the title character as a role model and mining the copious bounty of its terrific director's other fine work.

Jason and the Argonauts, IT! and Master and Commander were my child's first movie experiences and from there they got better and better. (I know, I shared them, so to speak, with her.) The child's cinematic influences and delights were as varied as the number of insect groups populating our Earth. One of her earliest obsessions - in addition, let me add, to Polanski - was the tremendous 50s musical Calamity Jane starring the effervescent Doris Day as the tomboy-ish, buckskin-adorned, sharp shootin', Injun' fightin' little filly who gets so googly-eyed over the handsome, studly Wild Bill Hickock (Howard Keel, 'natch) that she realizes how important it is for a woman to learn how to be a REAL woman. The film is exuberantly directed by the fine, sadly unsung American auteur David Butler who delivered hit after hit after hit for over 30 years before becoming a prolific director of many of the best works from American TV's Golden Age.

His features included Ali Baba Goes to Town with the brilliant Eddie Cantor, the glorious part-talkie musical comedy extravaganza Fox Movietone Follies of 1929 that features an early appearance from comic genius Stepin Fetchit, Road to Morocco, the third and absolute best of the Bob Hope, Bing Crosby and Dorothy Lamour "Road" comedies and among many, many other delicious cinematic bon bons, Butler was the go-to-guy for Shirley Temple and helmed many of her biggest and most beloved hits. My little girl watched Calamity Jane all the way through about 100 times, but this did not include all the times she'd replay the sprightly musical numbers. It wasn't, however, prudent as a parent to allow the child to watch Calamity Jane repeatedly WITHOUT introducing her to Butler's stellar canon. This, she surely appreciated as all his films offered first-tier entertainment value.

Funny Things Happen in Morocco. VERY funny!!!

The child's taste in movies was varied and, if I do say myself, she was well on her way to cinema literacy. That said, she required someone to gently guide her through 100 years of movie history. Unlike other parents, I took special care with what she was allowed to see. I wished desperately that others would do the same. I recall how often I'd find myself needing to viciously stare down any miserable miscreants of the bairn persuasion who demanded to see the latest Pixar or Disney animated trifle and, as is my wont, I'd drill holes of ocular hatred into all those cretinous little bastards who'd say, "Eeeew, that's not in colour" or worse, "Why are those special effects so cheesy?"

Fuck them!

Fuck them and whatever rotting hobby-horses they rode in on.

Whenever I heard such ignorance spewing from the mouths of bone-brained cinema-illiterate whelps such as these, my first impulse was, in the tradition of Polanski's Trelkovsky, to smash them with a motherfucker of a roundhouse to the face. I would restrain myself, though, for these offending dribblings were clearly the product of nurture, not nature. Nine times out of ten, I had no need to effect corporal punishment since the fault of these grotesque atrocities of taste were, in actuality (and in a less charitable age referred to as freaks of nature), wholly derived from the miserable progenitors of these innocents.

These breeders with careless abandon were solely and with nary a doubt in my sharp mind, the dregs, the reprehensible and UTTERLY STINKING, RANCID FILTH, who truly deserved my ire.

When my daughter was a toddler she'd wake me up every morning at 4 or 5 with the delightfully demanding words, “Movie! On!” And believe you me, it was MY distinct pleasure. Exposing oneself (and one’s children) to only the best not only results in developing exquisite taste in motion picture product (and pretty much everything else) but it allows for an acute awareness of what is truly mediocre. If a child is capable of this, anyone is. Most importantly, such exposure allows for the development of the highest degree of critical analysis. The following example I provide is proof positive of such critical acumen a child is capable of.

A VERY FOOLISH MAN

At age four, I fondly remember when the child joined me for lunch with a film critic/professor pal of mine and sat mutely as we discussed, among other important issues of the day, Raoul Walsh’s magnificent They Died With Their Boots On (starring Errol Flynn as General George Armstrong Custer). This happened to be a film she had, at the time, just seen. During this confab of middle-aged geek discourse, she was finally compelled to interject with the remarkable assertion that General Custer was “a foolish man” and not unlike “Peter Rabbit”. (Yes, believe it or not, I never deprived the child of fine cinema or literature beloved by children the world over. I read Beatrix Potter to her nightly.)

My pal, an American raised to believe that Custer was a heroic military defender of all that was right with might in the making of his country and NOT the perpetrator of mass genocide against the First Nations, queried my child on her admittedly contentious pronouncement and she calmly explained that just as Peter Rabbit unwisely ventured into Mr. MacGregor’s garden where his departed father had been captured and killed by the merciless rabbit-hunting Scotsman, so did General Custer unwisely venture into the Battle of Little Big Horn where he and all his men were spectacularly defeated by the armies of the Sioux Nation. My pal of the American persuasion nodded his head solemnly, lamenting that his own undergraduate students were unable to make similarly astute observations about movies (“or anything, for that matter”, he quipped).

Now before you jump to any conclusions I must state (in my defense) that I never attempted to indoctrinate the child (just as I would never attempt to indoctrinate anyone). My daughter developed this appetite for cinema all on her own. Though I did prepare and ultimately urge her to adhere to strict viewing lists during her youngest years, I did so to ensure well-roundedness.

Not to indoctrinate.

As she enters her tweener years, my dear child has seen over 4000 movies. Even now, she can occasionally point out stylistic traits in certain directors and has developed a great photographic eye. This pleases me greatly (though I do hope she'll eventually be a doctor or lawyer with great taste in movies, literature and art).

Ultimately, I do think that chances are pretty good, given the fine Ukrainian blood coursing through her veins, that she'd have come by all of this quite naturally, but I do suspect her phenomenal cinema literacy came a lot quicker, thanks mostly to my superior form of parenting.

If you don't want your child to become a Philistine, check out Part II of this treatise in the next edition of Klymkiw Film Corner where I'll offer tips, tricks and viewing lists that allowed MY own child to choose the ideal fork in the road. Maybe, yours too. LOL

Here is PART II of this important Guide HERE. If you're interested, feel free to read my daughter's movie reviews at this site. Her review of Miyazaki's "Spirited Away" is HERE, her review of "Jaws" is HERE and her review of "Mirror Mirror" is HERE.

Further readings on my methodologies can be found in the following important tomes:

Psychopathia Sexualis
by Richard Fridolin Joseph Freiherr Krafft von Festenberg auf Frohnberg, genannt von Ebing

The Ethics of the Dust
by John Ruskin

Là-Bas
by Joris-Karl Huysmans

L'histoire de l'oeil
by Georges Bataille

Les Chants de Maldoror
by the Comte de Lautréamont

Chicken Soup for the Soul
eds. Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen

PART II CAN BE FOUND BY CLICKING HERE






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