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 Blue Lagoon | |
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Lobby card | |
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 date | 1 October 1949 |
Running time | 101 minutes |
Country | United Kingdom |
Language | English |
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 account about Adam and Eve.
Screenplay
In 1904, Emmaline 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 Emmaline and Michael all alone with each other. Together, they survive solely on their resourcefulness and the bounty of their remote paradise.
10 years later, Emmaline 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. Emmaline and Michael have a 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 Michael to dive for pearls at gunpoint, before killing each other off.
Emmaline 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.
Actor | Role |
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Jean Simmons | Emmaline Foster |
Donald Houston | Michael Reynolds |
Susan Stranks | Emmaline (younger) |
Peter Rudolph Jones | Michael (younger) |
Noel Purcell | Paddy Button |
James Hayter | Dr. Murdock |
Cyril Cusack | James Carter |
Nora Nicholson | Mrs. Stannard |
Maurice Denham | Ship's Captain |
Philip Stainton | Mr. Ansty |
Patrick Barr | Second Mate |
Lyn Evans | Trotter |
Russell Waters | Craggs |
John Boxer | Nick Corbett |
Bill Raymond | Marsden |
The film was an adaptation of a novel which had been filmed in 1923.
Herbert Wilcox bought the rights to the novel in 1935 and announced he would make it as part of a slate of films. It was going to be shot in color in Honolulu.
However, he did not make the film and sold them to Gainsborough Pictures at the recommendation of Frank Launder, who always admired the novel. Gainsborough announced the film in 1938 as part of a slate of 10 films. The stars were to be Michael Redgrave and Margaret Lockwood who had just appeared in Gainsborough's The Lady Vanishes; Will Fyffe was to co-star. In 1939 it was announced Gainsborough would make the film as a co-production with 20th Century Fox and that Lockwood would co-star with Richard Greene, under contract to Fox. Plans to make the film were postponed due to the war.
The project was reactivated after the war and announced in 1947 with Frank Launder attached to direct. Extensive location searches were undertaken before deciding to make the movie in Fiji.
Plans to make the film were postponed due to Britain's currency difficulties, but eventually plans were re-activated.
Changes from novel
The evil traders were invented for this film and are not part of the novel.
Casting
Jean Simmons was attached to the project at an early stage off the back of her success in Great Expectations (1946).
Donald Houston was selected as the male lead over 5,000 applicants, 100 of whom were screen-tested.
Shooting
The film was shot on location in Fiji, Yasawa Islands, and at Pinewood Studios, Iver Heath, Buckinghamshire, England.
In December, a light plane carrying Leslie Gilliat, the producer and brother of Sidney Gilliat crashed into a river near Suva. Both Gilliat and the pilot escaped unharmed.
Simmons left England in November, spent some time in Australia and then travelled to Fiji. There was some doubt she would be let into Fiji, as she was only 18 and the Fijian colonial regime was contemplating a ban on people under 19 into the country as a precaution against polio being introduced.
Huston and Simmons narrowly escaped injury in Fiji when their car overturned.
The bulk of filming in Fiji took place on the Yasawa Islands. Storms caused shooting to take three months.
The film was the seventh most popular movie at the British box office in 1949.
- The film was remade in 1980 starring Brooke Shields and Christopher Atkins. The updated version of The Blue Lagoon, directed by Randal Kleiser, 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 second novel, The Garden of God. The pearl-greedy traders do not appear in Stacpoole's original novel. However, in Stacpoole's third novel, 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 Emmaline 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 shipborne field trip where Emma and Dean are lost at sea and end up on an island.
- State of nature