The Blue Lagoon (1949 film)

The Blue Lagoon
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Directed by	Frank Launder
Produced by	Sidney Gilliat Frank Launder
Written by	Novel: Henry De Vere Stacpoole Screenplay: John Baines Michael Hogan Frank Launder
Starring	Jean Simmons Donald Houston Noel Purcell James Hayter Cyril Cusack
Music by	Clifton Parker
Cinematography	Geoffrey Unsworth
Edited by	Thelma Connell
Distributed by	General Film Distributors (UK) Universal Pictures (USA)
Release dates	1 October 1949 (1949-10-01)
Running time	101 minutes
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English

The Blue Lagoon is a 1949 British romance and adventure film produced and directed by Frank Launder, starring Jean Simmons and Donald Houston. The screenplay was adapted by John Baines, Michael Hogan and Frank Launder from the 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 story of Adam and Eve.

Plot

In the Victorian period, 1891, Emmeline Foster and 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 all alone with each other. Together, they survive solely on their resourcefulness, and the bounty of their remote paradise.

8 Years later, Emmeline and Michael become tanned, athletic and nubile young adults. Eventually, their relationship, more along the lines of brother and sister in their youth, blossoms into love, and then passion. Emmeline and Michael have their baby boy, and they live together as common-law husband and wife, content in their solitude. But their marriage is threatened by the arrival of two evil traders, who force the child to dive for pearls at gunpoint, before killing each other off.

Emmeline is reminded of the outside world and wants to leave the island. She fears for the child if she and Michael should die, and begins to think of his future. Michael finally gives in to her pleading and they pack a small boat and leave the island. But becalmed in the middle of the ocean, they succumb to exposure. They are found by a British ship, but the film leaves their fate ambiguous.

Cast

Background and production

• The film was a remake of a black and white silent film shot in the United Kingdom in 1923, not long after the publication of the Henry De Vere Stacpoole novel on which it was based. The 1923 version was directed by W. Bowden and Dick Cruickshanks, starring Molly Adair and Dick Cruickshanks.
• Donald Houston was selected over 5,000 applicants, 100 of whom were screen tested.^[1]
• The evil traders were invented for this film and are not part of the novel.
• The film was shot on location in Fiji, Yasawa Islands,^[2] and at Pinewood Studios, Iver Heath, Buckinghamshire, England.

Reception

The film was the seventh most popular movie at the British box office in 1949.^[3]

Other versions and sequel

• The film was remade in 1980 starring Brooke Shields and Christopher Atkins. The updated version of The Blue Lagoon, directed by Randal Kleiser, was much closer to the spirit of the novel for it included nudity and sexual content, although not as much as the book.
• The updated 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 very little resemblance to Stacpoole's sequel, The Garden of God. The pearl-greedy traders do not appear in Stacpoole's original novel. However, in Stacpoole's third book, 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 Emmeline 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 ship-borne field trip where Emma and Dean are lost at sea and end up on an island. This film is available on DVD.

See also

• State of nature

References

External links

• The Blue Lagoon (1949) at the Internet Movie Database
• The Blue Lagoon (1949) at the TCM Movie Database
• The Blue Lagoon (1949) at AllMovie
• Review of film at Variety