The Blue Lagoon (1980 film)
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| The Blue Lagoon | |
|---|---|
 Promotional poster for The Blue Lagoon |
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| Directed by | Randal Kleiser |
| Produced by | Randal Kleiser |
| Written by | Douglas Day Stewart (screenplay) Based on the novel The Blue Lagoon by Henry De Vere Stacpoole |
| Starring | Brooke Shields Christopher Atkins Leo McKern William Daniels |
| Music by | Basil Poledouris |
| Cinematography | Nestor Almendros |
| Editing by | Robert Gordon |
| Distributed by | Columbia Pictures |
| Release date(s) | June 20, 1980 (USA) |
| Running time | 104 min. |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $4,500,000 (estimated) |
| Followed by | Return to the Blue Lagoon |
| All Movie Guide profile | |
| IMDb profile | |
The Blue Lagoon is a 1980 English language romance and adventure film starring Brooke Shields and Christopher Atkins, produced and directed by Randal Kleiser. The plot is about two young children stranded on a tropical island after a shipwreck. Emotional feelings and physical changes arise as they reach puberty and fall in love. The screenplay by Douglas Day Stewart was based on the novel The Blue Lagoon by Henry De Vere Stacpoole. The original music score was composed by Basil Poledouris. The film was marketed with the tagline "A sensuous story of natural love."
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[edit] Plot summary
In the Victorian period, two young children and a galley cook are the survivors of a shipwreck. In the turmoil of the burning ship from which they escaped, they become separated from another lifeboat that the boy's father (who is the girl's uncle) are in and drift out to sea. After days afloat, they arrive and are stranded on a lush tropical island. The cook, Paddy Button, assumes the responsibility for caring for the small children, teaching them how to behave, how to forage for food, etc. He cautions them about the other side of the island, where he has seen evidence of bloody human sacrifices. He doesn't go into detail but tells them the bogeyman is there, and makes them agree to a "law" that they will never venture in that direction. Another "law" is that they must never eat a certain scarlet berry that Emmeline finds -- they are "never-wake-up" berries. The memory of having had these things in her mouth haunts Emmeline in nightmares for the rest of the film, and because Paddy talks about being "dead'n'buried," she associates the words with the berries and calls them the "dead'n'berries."
An unspecified amount of time passes and Paddy eventually dies in a drunken binge. Together, cousins Richard and Emmeline Lestrange have to survive solely on their resourcefulness, and the bounty of their remote paradise. Years pass and both Richard and Emmeline grow into tall, strong and beautiful teenagers. They live in a self-constructed hut and spend their days together fishing, swimming, and diving for pearls. Eventually, strange emotions start influencing their relationship.
Richard and Emmeline begin to fall in love, although this is emotionally stressful for them due to their general ignorance of human sexuality. Both teens' bodies mature and develop, and they are physically attracted to each other, but do not know how to express it. Emmeline is shown beginning her first menstrual period and being very frightened at first. Richard has many questions about what is happening to them, but has no answers; he wants to hold and kiss Emmeline, but when she rejects him, he goes off alone and masturbates. Meanwhile, ever-curious Emmeline has wandered to the forbidden side of the island and discovered an impressive, Kon-Tiki-like idol there. Its shrine is covered with blood. Instinctively recognizing that this is a holy place, she kneels and prays, later telling Richard that she thinks Paddy was mistaken; that the "bogeyman", who bleeds like Jesus, is actually God.
Ultimately, after making up after a fight, they discover sexual intercourse. From then on, they make love quite often for several months, and eventually Emmeline gets pregnant. Although the audience is fully aware of Emmeline's condition, Richard and Emmeline themselves have no knowledge of childbirth and don't understand the physical changes to Emmeline's body.
One night, Richard discovers Emmeline is missing. Looking for her in the forest, he discovers the origins of the drums they have been hearing from time to time on the forbidden side of the island. They come from a group of natives from another island, who use the shrine to sacrifice conquered enemies. Richard hears Emmeline cry out, and follows the sound just in time to help her give birth to a baby boy whom they named Paddy.
The young couple spend all their time together with Paddy, teaching him how to swim, throw a spear, and play in the mud. It is during this mud play that we see a ship in the distance, heading for the island. Although Richard was formerly keen to leave and remonstrated with Emmeline for not lighting signal fires when they saw ships, he is now committed to the island as their home and does nothing; meanwhile, the crew, led by Richard's father Arthur, see the family playing on the shore but as they're completely covered in mud, assume that these are Tahitian natives, not the young couple they've been searching for all these years.
One day, the two young parents and Paddy cross in the lifeboat to the place they lived just after arriving. While Richard looks through their old things and cuts bananas, absent-minded Emmeline doesn't realize her son has not only brought a branch of some berries into the boat, he has tossed one of the oars out. When the tide sweeps the boat out into the lagoon, Richard swims to her, followed closely by a shark. Emmeline throws the other oar at the shark, striking it and giving Richard just enough time to get in the boat. Though not far from shore, they are unable to return -- they cannot jump in the water to retrieve the oars without risking a shark attack. They try to paddle with their hands, but to no avail; the boat is caught in the current and drifts out to sea.
After days of being adrift, Richard and Emmeline wake in the boat to find Paddy eating the berries he picked, a poisonous berry they called the "dead'n'berries". Emmeline tries to get him to spit them out, but he has swallowed them. Hopelessly lost, Richard and Emmeline decide to eat the berries as well, lying down embracing to await death.
Only a few hours later, Arthur's ship finds them floating in the boat. Arthur asks, "Are they dead?" and the ship's captain answers, "No, sir. They are asleep." The ambiguous ending, true to the book, leaves it uncertain as to whether they are sleeping and can be revived or if they are dead.
The story is eventually continued in the sequel Return to the Blue Lagoon. In this film, which picks up where The Blue Lagoon left off, Richard and Emmeline die in the lifeboat minutes after being found, but their son is rescued. He ultimately ends up back on the island in a story similar to that of the first film. This is based very loosely on Stacpoole's actual sequel The Garden of God.
[edit] Reaction
- Unlike her earlier Pretty Baby, this film featured no actual nude scenes for the young Shields, who was only 14 when the film was made. A body double was used for all of her nude scenes, although Shields was featured in several topless scenes. Atkins has a few full frontal nudity scenes however. It also featured them in love scenes, something the earlier film had lacked.
- The younger children who play the young Richard and Emmeline appear nude for far longer periods of time and much more explicitly. However, there was no real criticism of these scenes, since nude small children are ostensibly a more tame visual than adolescents with sexual inclinations.
- The film was criticized by several Christian and conservative groups, primarily due to the themes presented in the movie. Over the course of the film, the story touches on sexual development, menstruation, masturbation, unwed coitus, teenage pregnancy, alcoholism, and other controversial subjects. Although the film does not delve into any of these topics in depth nor does it seem to portend a moral message, the subject matter was considered offensive to some. To this day, some Christian film review sources cite The Blue Lagoon as a benchmark for measuring the immorality of a film, particularly when it comes to teenagers in sexual situations.
- The film was the ninth biggest box office hit of 1980 in North America according to Box Office Mojo, grossing US$58,853,106 in the United States and Canada[1].
[edit] Trivia
- This film is a remake of the 1949 classic The Blue Lagoon, starring Jean Simmons and Donald Houston. This version, directed by Frank Launder, lacks the nudity and sexual content of the 1980 version. However, the original filmed version was a black and white silent film shot in the UK in 1923. The 1923 version was directed by W. Bowden and Dick Cruickshanks, starring Molly Adair and Dick Cruickshanks.
- This film was followed eleven years later by the 1991 sequel Return to the Blue Lagoon, starring Milla Jovovich and Brian Krause. Also produced by Randal Kleiser, the sequel answers (grimly) the question of whether Richard and Emmeline survived beyond the end of The Blue Lagoon. It is only very loosely based on Stacpoole's sequel, The Garden of God.
- This film was parodied by the 1984 comedy film Top Secret!, starring Val Kilmer and Lucy Gutteridge. The film is written and directed by Jim Abrahams, David Zucker and Jerry Zucker.
- The DVD version of this film featured two audio commentaries. The first is by Randal Kleiser, Douglas Day Stewart, and Brooke Shields; the second is by Randal Kleiser and Christopher Atkins. It also featured a personal photo album by Brooke Shields, which was taken during the making of the film.
- Character actor Gus Mercurio is the only cast member of this film who also appeared in Return to the Blue Lagoon eleven years later. He played the first mate of the ship that found Richard and Emmeline.
- Dana Plato was offered the role of Emmeline Lestrange in the film. Plato was interested but her agent advised her against it because of fear that it could hurt her innocent, wholesome image she had on Diff'rent Strokes.
- Lori Loughlin was offered the lead role of Emmeline Lestrange in the film, but turned it down.
- Willie Aames and Diane Lane both auditioned for the film, but turned down the project because they refused to do nudity (Lane however went on to do full frontal nudity in the 1987 thriller Lady Beware; Aames would eventually take the lead part in the 1982 romance film Paradise sans clothes, which is often considered to be the Canadian version of The Blue Lagoon).
- Kelly Preston auditioned for the role of Emmeline Lestrange, but turned it down for being too sophisticated for the role of a wild child. Matt Dillon was the original choice for the role of Richard Lestrange, but turned it down because he refused to do nudity.
- Reportedly, appearing nude in this film inspired Christopher Atkins to be less worried about things like bathing suits, etc. in real life. In addition, Brooke Shields was rather nervous about doing the menstruation scene prior to her actual experience.
- In the DVD version of this film, it was stated that many of Brooke Shields' nude scenes were in fact done by older body doubles. In addition, the film's stunt coordinator Kathy Troutt was one of the body doubles as well as the dolphin trainer. It was also stated that Brooke Shields had done many of her topless scenes with her hair glued to her breasts.
- This film was shot on location in Jamaica and Nanuya Levu, a privately-owned island in Fiji.
[edit] Bloopers
- When Paddy slides down the waterfall shouting, his mouth is not moving.
- As Richard and Emmeline observe the crab coming out of the mouth of Paddy's dead body, one can see his nostrils flaring as he breathes.
- At one point, Richard comes out of the water with his hair dripping wet. A moment later on the beach, his hair is very dry.
- Emmeline's hair changes length several times through most of the film. Brooke Shields was wearing wigs through most of the film, when she and Christopher Atkins were on the island.
- The rainy day gives way suddenly, and Richard and Emmeline are inside their hut where he is playing Pop Goes the Weasel over and over, which annoys her. She stabs him with a spear and he chases her outside the hut, into a clear, bright day without a cloud in the sky. She is wearing a strapless dress, but when he catches her and pins her down on the sand, she is wearing a lacey jacket and the beach is very dry.
- When Richard and Emmeline have a fight, she sleeps in her own shelter during a storm, and has a makeshift wall of palm leaves. The rain is coming down to the left, but the wall comes down to the right, against the wind and the rain. One can see a rope at the top of the shelter pulling it down.
- When Emmeline is sick and Richard takes her to God and places her on the rock, she is shown lying down on her right side, her face turned to the side with her hair partly covering her face. At one point, she is lying face up and her hair is away from her face, then she is again on her side with her hair back on her face.
- When Richard goes fishing from the boat and his catch is attacked by sharks, tearing the line from his hands, a rope can clearly be seen dragging the first shark through the water.
- When Richard gloats about being such a great fisherman, a crew member's hand can clearly be seen pushing a fish toward a camera.
- Baby Paddy is clearly circumcised, though the trio is far from civilization and circumcision was unknown in the Victorian period outside of Jewish and Muslim cultural practices.
- After baby Paddy is born, at one point where it is lying on the bed, it is lying on a blue-green print receiving blanket. Next the baby is wrapped in a fur or rough cloth material.
- After Emmeline teaches the baby to swim, they go swimming together. They have no clothes on in the underwater shots, but in a close-up of Emmeline, a little piece of clothing is visible.
- Richard is right-handed as a child, but is left-handed as an adult.
- After Paddy dies, and Richard and Emmeline pack up the dinghy, the handsome toy boat is prominently displayed on top of their belongings. Years later, when they return to their original hut, Richard is digging up through the rubble and finds what is left of the toy boat that he clearly took with him.
- As Emmeline is looking at the God statue on the forbidden side on the island — where she and Richard hear the drums from time to time — one can clearly spot that she is wearing lipstick. In the book, Emmeline was fond of decorating herself with shells, pearls, and flowers, but having spent her first seven years as a middle-class Victorian girl, she would probably not have thought to paint her lips, even with berry juice.
- As Emmeline is finger-combing her hair shortly before she calls to Richard to feel their baby moving inside of her, one can clearly spot that she is wearing fingernail polish. Again, it is the Victorian period, so this would be inappropriate even if these two have not been stranded on a desert island for years.
- There are both macaws and cockatoos on the island. Macaws are from South America and cockatoos are from Australia.
[edit] Awards and nominations
- Nominee: Academy Award for Best Cinematography - Nestor Almendros
- Nominee: Saturn Award - Best Fantasy Film
- Nominee: Golden Globe Award, New Star of the Year - Christopher Atkins
- Winner: 1980 Golden Raspberry Awards, Worst Actress - Brooke Shields
- Nominee: Best Major Motion Picture - Family Entertainment
- Nominee: Best Young Motion Picture Actor - Christopher Atkins
- Nominee: Best Young Motion Picture Actress - Brooke Shields
[edit] Cast
| Actor | Role |
|---|---|
| Brooke Shields | Emmeline Lestrange |
| Christopher Atkins | Richard Lestrange |
| Leo McKern | Paddy Button |
| William Daniels | Arthur Lestrange |
| Elva Josephson | Young Emmeline |
| Glenn Kohan | Young Richard |
| Alan Hopgood | Captain |
| Gus Mercurio | Officer |
| Jeffrey Kleiser | Lookout |
| Bradley Price | Little Paddy |
| Chad Timmerman | Infant Paddy |
| Gert Jacoby | Sailor |
| Alex Hamilton | Sailor |
| Richard Evanson | Sailor |
[edit] External links
