Lord of the Flies (1963)

Directed by Peter Brook. Starring James Aubrey, Hugh Edwards, Tom Chapin, Roger Elwin, Tom Gaman.

Starkly-photographed adaptation of William Golding’s allegorical novel detailing the descent into savagery undertaken by British schoolboys who are marooned on a deserted island. The themes hold up amid a handful of gripping moments, but the production is hampered by a batch of stilted child actors (almost all of them amateurs/first-timers), constantly struggling to articulate their dialogue with conviction. Peter Brook directs with an eye toward visualizing primitivism and crowd-controlled anarchy, so I suspect he needed a more seasoned or naturalistic group to pick up the slack on the improvisation-heavy dialogue—no screenwriter is credited. Another adaptation of the same story (with wartime British kids replaced by contemporary Americans) was released in 1990.

66/100