It's never easy watching a film you haven't seen for nigh on twelve years and it's especially difficult when you realise in the days of said viewing, you might have even seen it three times during one summer holiday week. Such was the situation with Treasure Island, a film rich in energy and sense of adventure with its glorious Technicolor for 1950 and expansive approach consisting of several exotic locations, both internal and external. Kids these days may well be brought up on Disney's golden goose in the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy, a trilogy I am not fond of at all, but viewing this for the first time in just over a decade felt more like a nostalgia trip than anything else but it still retains that charm and intrigue.
I'll be blunt and put forward the case for the Golden era of Hollywood film-making being the best. If we compare Treasure Island to the much more contemporary 'Pirates' trilogy, we can see that back in the day a pirate was a character with an obscure accent and appearance to match I am of course talking about Long John Silver played by Robert Newton in a performance that 'invented' the pirate 'cliché' (I use the word cliché with all due respect). As an actor, Newton is up there with Lugosi when it comes to bringing to the screen a filmic caricature; Lugosi's being the vampire. Nowadays, the character of the pirate is relegated to looking like a freak and in POTC's case must inhabit some sort of un-dead un-canniness within him to make it extra interesting. They are not aided when a name and a face in the form of Johnny Depp must stand in front of the camera and burble some nonsense in a silly voice.
As a study of the pirate, Treasure Island is the Star Wars of the subject; it is the beginning and the breaking of the mould that allows all the more recent garbage to even get made in the first place so on one hand, you have to pay credit to Treasure Island for its ingenuity even if it is a bad thing in the long run. As a film alone, it just about makes the grade. As an historical piece, it owes a lot to the large scale Hollywood epics like King Kong and The Adventures of Robin Hood which placed its protagonists in strange and somewhat dangerous rural places before having them strive for their lives once the film gets going, Treasure Island strongly resembles these narrative ideas. Indeed, the film's lone scene of rather extreme for the time violence is a siege on a rural makeshift fort in the jungle, something its hero Jim Hawkins (Driscoll) must endure.
Treasure Island switches effortlessly between location scenes and studio based shoots, blending its editing in with its rousing score typical of the classical Hollywood era. There is a particularly well executed scene later on when, at night, a pirate chases young Jim around a boat and up some rigging before a final confrontation plays out. The scene is menacing perhaps purely for the reason it is a young child in quite some peril. But everything begins with an effortless establishment in Bristol, England where Jim (who's accent is American, but that will have to be ignored during viewing) comes across a treasure map hiding something in the region of £100,000. As a protagonist, Jim is a child but that does not mean he is weak. He serves drinks behind his mother's bar to the roughest looking of men and looks as if he can keep straight faced and cool headed when he needs to tell a lie. Jim is a child but he does not adopt typical childish characteristics and this is all helped by some good acting on Driscoll's behalf Bloom and Knightly take note: get into your character, asses what they should be and then weigh up the predicament they're in and surprise your audience by going against type.
As a character, Jim also represents in a meek fashion the target audience itself. The idea that Disney films were produced predominantly for kids was probably truer in 1950 than it is now and to have a young hero like Jim for the tykes to map onto is a good move, speaking from some form of experience I suppose one of the reason's I kept coming back to this film when I was very young was because I rarely saw a child protagonist in a film; either that or my parents realised it was a good way to shut me up and put it on every now and then. So if Jim is the fish-out-of-water child hero then the people around him are a little less-so. Squire Trelawney (Fitzgerald) is a loud, port drinking Englishman and the doctor is the opposite; a quiet and educated Englishman whom is also well-spoken. Equally so, the character of Ben Gunn once on the island comes off as failed comic relief that mercifully, is used in a sparse manner.
This is a Disney film about pirates in which you do not get a pretty faced Keira Knightley caked in makeup talking about how she 'wishes to evoke the rule of parlez' in front of a group of characters whom resemble freaks more so than seafarers. The film is quite violent for a 1950s Disney flick and pushes the censorship codes at the time in the sense it allows a killer and a scoundrel to get away with it all. My heart says vote it higher but this is an ordinary tale, albeit interesting, that failed to 'wow' me in the manner other such classical films have done recently.
I'll be blunt and put forward the case for the Golden era of Hollywood film-making being the best. If we compare Treasure Island to the much more contemporary 'Pirates' trilogy, we can see that back in the day a pirate was a character with an obscure accent and appearance to match I am of course talking about Long John Silver played by Robert Newton in a performance that 'invented' the pirate 'cliché' (I use the word cliché with all due respect). As an actor, Newton is up there with Lugosi when it comes to bringing to the screen a filmic caricature; Lugosi's being the vampire. Nowadays, the character of the pirate is relegated to looking like a freak and in POTC's case must inhabit some sort of un-dead un-canniness within him to make it extra interesting. They are not aided when a name and a face in the form of Johnny Depp must stand in front of the camera and burble some nonsense in a silly voice.
As a study of the pirate, Treasure Island is the Star Wars of the subject; it is the beginning and the breaking of the mould that allows all the more recent garbage to even get made in the first place so on one hand, you have to pay credit to Treasure Island for its ingenuity even if it is a bad thing in the long run. As a film alone, it just about makes the grade. As an historical piece, it owes a lot to the large scale Hollywood epics like King Kong and The Adventures of Robin Hood which placed its protagonists in strange and somewhat dangerous rural places before having them strive for their lives once the film gets going, Treasure Island strongly resembles these narrative ideas. Indeed, the film's lone scene of rather extreme for the time violence is a siege on a rural makeshift fort in the jungle, something its hero Jim Hawkins (Driscoll) must endure.
Treasure Island switches effortlessly between location scenes and studio based shoots, blending its editing in with its rousing score typical of the classical Hollywood era. There is a particularly well executed scene later on when, at night, a pirate chases young Jim around a boat and up some rigging before a final confrontation plays out. The scene is menacing perhaps purely for the reason it is a young child in quite some peril. But everything begins with an effortless establishment in Bristol, England where Jim (who's accent is American, but that will have to be ignored during viewing) comes across a treasure map hiding something in the region of £100,000. As a protagonist, Jim is a child but that does not mean he is weak. He serves drinks behind his mother's bar to the roughest looking of men and looks as if he can keep straight faced and cool headed when he needs to tell a lie. Jim is a child but he does not adopt typical childish characteristics and this is all helped by some good acting on Driscoll's behalf Bloom and Knightly take note: get into your character, asses what they should be and then weigh up the predicament they're in and surprise your audience by going against type.
As a character, Jim also represents in a meek fashion the target audience itself. The idea that Disney films were produced predominantly for kids was probably truer in 1950 than it is now and to have a young hero like Jim for the tykes to map onto is a good move, speaking from some form of experience I suppose one of the reason's I kept coming back to this film when I was very young was because I rarely saw a child protagonist in a film; either that or my parents realised it was a good way to shut me up and put it on every now and then. So if Jim is the fish-out-of-water child hero then the people around him are a little less-so. Squire Trelawney (Fitzgerald) is a loud, port drinking Englishman and the doctor is the opposite; a quiet and educated Englishman whom is also well-spoken. Equally so, the character of Ben Gunn once on the island comes off as failed comic relief that mercifully, is used in a sparse manner.
This is a Disney film about pirates in which you do not get a pretty faced Keira Knightley caked in makeup talking about how she 'wishes to evoke the rule of parlez' in front of a group of characters whom resemble freaks more so than seafarers. The film is quite violent for a 1950s Disney flick and pushes the censorship codes at the time in the sense it allows a killer and a scoundrel to get away with it all. My heart says vote it higher but this is an ordinary tale, albeit interesting, that failed to 'wow' me in the manner other such classical films have done recently.