February 19, 2021
Treasure Island (1950) ***
Disney +
Free
Disney other
“Them that die will be the lucky ones!”
Treasure Island was the very first completely live-action film made by Disney, but once they started they just started rolling them out like gangbusters, I thought at first because they discovered how very much cheaper they were than animation, not to mention faster, but it turns out it is because after the war, any money they made on Disney films in the UK had to be spent there, so they opened a film unit in England.
It was also the last of the four films Bobby Driscoll did for Disney, at least as live action, because of course he voiced and modeled for Peter Pan a few years later.
The film also starred Robert Newton as Long John Silver, who invented the famous pirate voice by exaggerating his own West Country accent, so all of those “Aaarrrr”s that we do today when we are playing pirate, that’s all him. It seems extremely odd to see someone performing in that accent just as a matter of course.
They did a pretty good job with condensing the script, because the whole “Billy Bones shows up at the Admiral Benbow” section at the beginning could take a full half hour on its own, they just start right away with Blind Pew arriving and go on from there.
The photography is beautiful, the sea and the sky and the ship and the adventure! Yes, it’s a little odd that Jim Hawkins is an American child there for some reason, but they weren’t so hung up on accents in the olden days, and often they would be just so wrong that you’d be like, I believe everything, I’m all in! Or otherwise you wouldn’t find out about what happened with the pirate treasure and the mutineers and Squire Trelawney’s big fat mouth!
It is a fun flick, and a great yarn, and well worth the watch.
365 Films in 365 Days 