Lord of the Flies
Short description
After a plane carrying a group of British schoolboys crashes on a remote island, the surviving children find themselves entirely without adults. Two of the older boys, Ralph and Jack, emerge as competing figures: Ralph tries to keep the group organized around rules, shelter and a signal fire, while Jack's interest in hunting pulls the boys toward a more violent way of living. The attempt at an orderly society gradually falls apart as the group splits.
Peter Brook, better known for his theatre work, directed and wrote the screenplay for this adaptation of William Golding's novel. It was the first of the two films he directed, followed by King Lear in 1970, and was produced by Lewis M. Allen. James Aubrey plays Ralph and Tom Chapin plays Jack, with Hugh Edwards as Piggy; the large ensemble of child performers gives the film an unpolished, documentary-like feel.
Released in 1963, the film runs 92 minutes and sits in the adventure, drama and thriller genres. Ratings are modest from fairly substantial audiences: on IMDb it holds 6.8 out of 10 from around 22,000 votes, and on TMDB 6.7 out of 10 from roughly 595 votes, indicating a reasonably well-regarded work whose reputation rests more on its subject matter than on broad popularity.
What's left behind the scenes
- The director shot over 60 hours of footage, from which the 90-minute film was subsequently edited.
- The main part of the film was shot on the coast of the island of Puerto Rico and the nearby island of Vieques from April 17 to August 1961.
- American distributors insisted on reducing the film's length to 90 minutes, and these demands had to be met. One episode with fire and several episodes developing Ralph's storyline were cut.
- At the beginning of filming, Peter Brook largely did without a script, encouraging improvisation skills in his young actors.
- 11-year-old Hugh Edwards landed the role of Piggy by writing a letter to the director, which read: 'Dear Sir, I am fat and wear glasses.'
- When casting the film, director Peter Brook reviewed more than 3,000 boys.
- William Golding's "Lord of the Flies," upon which the film is based, was conceived as an ironic commentary on R.M. Ballantyne’s "The Coral Island" (1858) – an adventure story for young people that celebrates the optimistic imperial views of Victorian England.
- In 1996, thirty-five years later, the BBC television company filmed a documentary about the making of the film, reuniting all the key actors and crew members on the same beach on the Caribbean coast where filming took place. Among other things, it told about the subsequent fate of the child actors who starred in the film – of all of them, only James Aubrey, who played Ralph, was tempted by an acting career.
- Tom Chepin (Jack) completely lost his English accent within a year, and for this reason, another boy voiced some of Jack's lines.
- The film received an X rating from British censors, according to which none of the child actors could attend its premiere, although they all participated in the filming and were, in one way or another, familiar with the footage.
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
