The Blue Lagoon

The Blue Lagoon (1923)

In the Victorian period, two children are shipwrecked on a tropical island in the South Pacific. With no adults to guide them, the two make a simple life together, unaware that sexual maturity will eventually intervene. A lost film.

Date of release
1923-02-05
TMDB
7.5 / 10 (2)
Runtime
1h 20m
Genres
Drama
Director
Dick Cruikshanks

Casting

Interesting facts

The Blue Lagoon is a lost 1923 British-South African silent film adaptation of Henry De Vere Stacpoole's 1908 novel of the same name about children who come of age while stranded on a tropical island. It is the first screen adaptation of the story, and two additional adaptations appeared in 1949 and 1980, with both versions achieving commercial success.

Production history

In January 1919, African Film Productions (AFP) secured the filming rights to Henry De Vere Stacpoole’s widely acclaimed novel The Blue Lagoon. AFP’s head, I.W. Schlesinger, had paid a substantial sum for the rights, as the book had been a commercial hit.

Schlesinger took on the challenge of adapting The Blue Lagoon for the big screen, fully aware of the difficulties involved. However, he believed the effort would be worth it if done right. For a story of this kind, finding the right location, actors, and producer was crucial to its success on screen.

Conflicting rights issues between stage and cinema adaptations delayed AFP's production by almost three years. Basil Dean, who produced a successful stage version of The Blue Lagoon in England, had hoped to turn it into his debut film. However, he first presented the play at the Prince of Wales Theatre in London from October 1920 to February 1921, followed by a provincial tour to Edinburgh.

Basil Dean announced his intention to create a film adaptation of The Blue Lagoon in January 1920 and predicted it would be released in December of the same year. The casting of Madeline Robinson as the child Emmeline and Faith Celli as the adolescent Emmeline was announced in September, promising a high-quality film.

William Weston Bowden carefully edited the script for the film, adapted from Stacpoole's original story about two young people who grow up without knowledge of human concepts like birth, death, and marriage. The success of the movie was dependent on the performances of two child actors and two young adult actors who portrayed the cousins, Dick and Emmeline.

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

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