The Blue Lagoon (1980)

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Movie
German title The blue lagoon
Original title The Blue Lagoon
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1980
length 101 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Randal Kleiser
script Douglas Day Stewart
production Randal Kleiser
music Basil Poledouris
camera Néstor Almendros
cut Robert Gordon
occupation
chronology

Successor  →
return to the blue lagoon

The Blue Lagoon (OT: The Blue Lagoon) is an American film drama from 1980. Directed by Randal Kleiser , the screenplay was written by Douglas Day Stewart based on the novel by Henry De Vere Stacpoole from 1908. Brooke played the leading roles Shields and Christopher Atkins .

action

The two children Emmeline and Richard Lestrange sailed around 1900. A fire is discovered, only Emmeline, Richard, the sailor Paddy Button and Richard's father (Emmeline's uncle) survive the sinking of the ship with a few other sailors. The survivors lose touch with each other in the fog. Paddy, Richard and Emmeline are stranded with their boat on an island in the South Pacific .

The children are brought up by Paddy Button, who keeps telling them not to eat the berries of the island because otherwise they would die. The two are still very young when the sailor dies. They leave the beach where they lived with Paddy and look for a new home elsewhere on the island.

The whole time it is not entirely clear what the relationship between the cousins ​​is, and they too are overwhelmed with their feelings for one another. Emmeline and Richard are going through puberty. Emmeline withdraws in shock and embarrassment when she gets her period . Richard pleases himself and his cousin makes fun of it. They get into an argument.

Eventually they discover their sexuality , they have a child and give him the name Paddy . They live happily on the island for many years, and when one day a ship passes by, they don't call for him, but leave the beach. What they don't know: Richard's father, who has never given up looking for the children, is sitting in the ship.

One day Richard and Emmeline want to return with their son Paddy to the place where they lived with Button for the first few months. With their lifeboat they drive around the island to the old beach. While Richard worries about the banana trees, Emmeline and Paddy unconsciously drift into the sea. You lose an oar. Richard swims after them, followed by a shark. Emmeline throws the second oar at the shark to protect Richard from the shark's attack. But now they are missing both oars. The current drives the boat further and further out to sea. They try to row back with their hands and finally give up, they can't go back. Emmeline finds twigs in the boat that Paddy had previously collected. Richard and Emmeline notice that Paddy has already swallowed some "Berries of Eternal Sleep". Richard picks the remaining berries that they should never eat. Due to the apparent hopelessness of their situation and the alleged loss of their son, Richard and Emmeline also eat away. The small family lies in the boat to die.

They are later spotted from a ship, again Richard's father's ship. With a dinghy he drives over to the found boat with a few sailors. A sailor realizes that the three are not dead, only asleep.

background

The Eye of the Wind
  • The roles of Richard and Emmeline were originally intended for Matt Dillon and Helen Hunt , but both turned down the role after a period of reflection due to some revealing scenes.
  • Production costs amounted to approximately 4.5 million US dollars . The film grossed approximately $ 58.85 million in US cinemas.
  • The role of the ship Northumberland , which can be seen in the first part of the film with a dark decorative line on the white hull, was taken over by the Germany-built Eye of the Wind (launched 1911), which at the time had its home port in London. The ship with which Richard's aged father searches for the missing in the middle and at the end of the film was portrayed by The Golden Plover (1910-2011, then homeport Melbourne , Australia), which had a blue hull and white disguise . Both ships were schooner briggs at the time , rigged with white sails .
  • In 1991 the sequel Return to the Blue Lagoon with Milla Jovovich and Brian Krause was filmed. This time you had to go to Taveuni, Fiji, for the location. Return to the Blue Lagoon is more of a remake than a sequel in terms of content .
  • The novel was filmed in 1949 under the same title with Jean Simmons and Donald Houston . The exterior shots for this first film adaptation were also shot on Nanuya Levu .
  • The film was featured in the comedy Top Secret! parodies. Hillary Flammond and Nigel are stranded on an island. A Soviet freighter saves Nigel, who later becomes a staunch communist and traitor in the resistance movement.
  • The main actor Christopher Atkins made his film debut in this film.

Location

Beach at the Blue Lagoon on Nanuya Lailai

A special feature of this Hollywood production is that the entire film was 100% recorded externally (i.e. not in studios). This was still very unusual in the 1970s. Except for two scenes, the squid fight and the scene in which Christopher Atkins let himself be pulled by a dolphin ( SeaWorld , San Diego ), the film was shot in Jamaica , Vanuatu and Nanuya Levu . This island, which was converted into a luxury vacation resort in the 1980s and is also known as Turtle Island, is part of Fiji's Yasawa group of islands . The majority of the production staff were Australians. Filming lasted three months, beginning in late July and ending in October 1979.

Reviews

Roger Ebert described the film in the Chicago Sun-Times on July 3, 1980 as "the dumbest movie of the year". Rob Vaux referred to it in Flipside Movie Emporium as “pornography for people who go to book burns; a sex fantasy as chaste as your piano teacher from the third grade. "The lexicon of the international film judged:" The harmless and sentimental film can hardly go beyond a pleasing natural picture sheet . His topic of sexual initiation often comes close to being cautious and pretentious. Lots of soft focus eroticism with puritanical undertones. "

Awards

The cameraman Néstor Almendros was nominated for an Oscar .

Christopher Atkins was nominated for the Golden Globe for Best Young Actor and the Young Artist Award . Brooke Shields received the Golden Raspberry and was nominated for the Young Artist Award . The film also received nominations for the Saturn Award for Best Fantasy Film and for the Young Artist Award for Best Family Film .

Remake 2012

On December 9, 2011, the television station Lifetime announced that there would be a “contemporary remake” of the 1980 film. Storyline Entertainment and Peace Out Prods produced the film in association with Sony Pictures Television. The casting for the remake began in late 2011, and shooting started in February 2012 in Hawaii. In June 2012, the film Blue Lagoon : The Awakening was broadcast on American television.

Newcomers Brenton Thwaites and Indiana Evans took on the leading roles. The television film is now the fourth adaptation of the 1908 novel by Henry De Vere Stacpoole. Before 1980, it had been filmed in 1923 and 1949 .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Business Data for The Blue Lagoon
  2. ↑ no author details (August 11, 2011). End of era for the plover. Whitsunday Times (accessed October 25, 2013)
  3. ^ Review by Roger Ebert
  4. ^ Review by Rob Vaux
  5. ↑ The blue lagoon. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed December 26, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used