Kidnapped

Kidnapped (1971)

Robert Louis Stevenson's Great Adventure Story...Now a Monumental Motion Picture!

Scottish orphan David Balfour is betrayed by his wicked uncle Ebeneezer, who arranges for David to be kidnapped and sold into slavery so that he cannot claim his inheritance. The boy is rescued and befriended by Alan Breck, a Scottish rebel fighting on behalf of his country's independence from the British.

Date of release
1971-12-22
TMDB
6.1 / 10 (44)
Runtime
1h 40m
Genres
Adventure, History
Director
Delbert Mann

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Based on: Kidnapped and Catriona

Kidnapped is a 1971 British adventure film, directed by Delbert Mann and starring Michael Caine, Trevor Howard, Jack Hawkins and Donald Pleasence, as well as a number of well-known British character actors. The film is based on the 1886 novel Kidnapped and the first half of the 1893 sequel Catriona by Robert Louis Stevenson.

Production

The film was produced by Frederick Brogger, through his company Omnibus Productions, which Brogger half owned with actor James Franciscus). Omnibus made four classical adaptations of novels, all of which were directed by Delbert Mann: Heidi (1968), David Copperfield (1970), Jane Eyre (1971) and Kidnapped. Franciscus said "We saw that no one was doing the classics.

The original title was David and Catriona. Delbert Mann says they wanted to focus more on those characters than Alan Breck, but wanted to give Breck "more guts and more balls" than he was traditionally portrayed. They wrote in scenes where Breck commits premeditated murder but ultimately had to cut them out due to the censor.

The filmmakers realised that the film would be too expensive for television. They told NBC who pulled out and the project was refinanced with American International Pictures putting up NBC's share instead. This made Kidnapped Omnibus' first purely theatrical film.

Leads Lawrence Douglas and Vivien Heilbron were relatively unknown. Filming started in London at Pinewood Studios on 10 May 1971. Five weeks location shooting began in Scotland on 30 May. Scottish locations included Argyll, Mull, Culross and Stirling Castle. The opening moorland scene of the end of the Battle of Culloden was filmed in Argyll, with Highlander extras provided by Lochaber High School and Redcoat extras by Oban High School.

Caine later said he "never got paid for" the film. "They made it when they didn’t have the money to make it. I got a small percentage just so they would be able to release it, to get at least some money back on it. It was an absolute and utter disaster from beginning to end." Mann confirms that "no one was paid fully" and says Caine "was a key figure to get us through it."

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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