Treasure Island (1934)

Strong and Moving!

It is a performances centric movie

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Beery's Long John Silver and Barrymore's Billy Bones are the quintessential pop-culture pirates, parrots and all, and for that alone 1934's "Treasure Island" is worth watching. The black and white cinematography is great (I gather that there is a colourised version but who cares) and the music, with the iconic "Yo ho ho, and a bottle of rum" theme, is perfect. The gang of pirates are as scurrilous a band of brigands as you could ask for: the embodiment of treachery with bad teeth, led by the conniving Silver, played to the cutlass hilt by the great Wallace Beery. The only real weak point is child-star Jackie Cooper's Jack Hawkins character. Cooper's characteristic pouting lower lip and Shirley Temple delivery just didn't work in the generally grim and dark tale – every time he spoke, I expected Wheezer or Stymie to show up (apparently Cooper himself was not pleased by his delivery of the role). Other than that, and the studio-approved alteration to the end of the story, this is a fine version of the Robert L. Stevenson's classic novel.

Hollywood vintage adaptation of the Robert Louis Stevenson pirate adventure from an eyeball-rolling Wallace Beery and a splendid Jacke Coogan . Again we live the roaring adventure of men against the sea . We share the struggles, the heartaches, the laughter of courageous souls who leave their houses they love to dare the wrath of the angry pirates. Upright men and greedy pirates in conflict with their destiny enacting the Robert Stevenson's most thrilling story. Jim Hawkins (an appealing acting by Jackie Coogan) encounters the map that lead to a distant island where is a buried treasure. Then , the young boy join forces with captain Smollett (Lewis Stone), Squire (Nigel Bruce), Doctor Livesey (Otto Kruger) and of course a boisterous Long John Silver(a brilliant triumph by Wallace Beery who is notably snarly , though relatively subdued) journey to isle of hidden bounty. The young cabin boy Hawkins has a treasure map and a boatload of kill-crazed pirates eager for the riches hidden on Treasure Island . Jim Hawkins matches with peg-legged Long Silver and adventures go on .Fun story of high seas adventure plenty of intrigue , fights and action. The whole piece of adventure teems with emotion , thrills , humor , atmosphere and being pretty amusing . Appropriately adventurous rendition of Robert Stevenson's often-filmed and spine-tingling tale , in which Wallace Beery hands perfectly the role as rogue pirate and gives a memorable acting, as always. Jackie Coogans as sympathetic naive Jim is fabulous and appealing . Delightful performance by Charles Chic Sale as Ben Gunn, as well. At the film appears usual and notorious secondary actors in several Hollywood productions, such as Lionel Barrymore as Billy Bones , Otto Kruger as Doctor Livesey , Lewis Stone as Captain Smollett , Douglass Dumbrille as Pirate of the Spanish Main and Watson's Nigel Bruce as Squire . The motion picture was well directed directed by Victor Fleming . This production is powered by the great Wallace Beery and likable Jackie Coogan. Also available in horrible colorized version . Rating : Above average . Well worth watching , you'll be on the edge of your seat . Other renditions -being multitudinous remakes , as there are many films made of it- based on this classic novel are the followings : Disney take on (1950) by Byron Haskin with Robert Newton , Basil Sydney and Bobby Driscoll , respectable full-blooded second-best the classic Fleming version ; European retelling (1974) by John Hough with Orson Welles , Angel Del Pozo , Lionel Stander and Kim Burfield ; Teasure Island (1999) by Marc Charlesbois with Jack Palance , Patrick Bergin and Kevin Zegers ; TV recounting by Fraser C Heston with Charlton Heston , Christian Bale and Richard Johnson ; and cartoon-Sci-Fi version Treasure planet (2002) directed by John Musker and Ron Clemens . Furthermore , Muppet's Treasure island and recent rendition (2012) starred by Eddie Izzard .

I noticed, like some of the other reviewers, that few in the film had the necessary British accents needed to play these characters well. However, despite this, the movie is an excellent version of the Stevenson novel--mostly due to good acting, great sets and the nice MGM polish you'd expect from one of their top productions.As far as the film goes, it's one of the earliest of the Wallace Beery films that teamed him with a cute kid--a formula that was repeated again and again up until Beery's death in 1949. Considering that according to his co-star, Jackie Cooper, Beery hated children and did little to hide it off camera--so I am sure in some ways Beery probably wished this and "The Champ" hadn't been so successful!! As for the story, it's the often told story of "Treasure Island" by Robert Louis Stevenson. It's reasonably faithful to the story and is better than other versions I have seen. However, I have NOT seen the very famous Robert Newton version (by many seen as the best), so I cannot say the 1934 version was the best--though many of the newer versions tended to be a bit more dull. Like it or not, the Beery-Cooper schmaltz was entertaining--and I can see why audiences fell for it by the millions!By the way, like so many releases from Turner Entertainment, this film includes many wonderful extras from the same studio (MGM) from the same year as this feature's release. Turner also does this with many of their classic Warner Brothers releases as well--making them excellent values for customers.

TREASURE ISLAND is the sort of film that cries out for Technicolor since it deals with pirates, treasure maps, ships at sea and a fort under attack--the sort of thing done in scores of other movies (and other versions of the story), but usually in color.Here the B&W photography is handsome enough, the sets look sturdy, the ship masts are full and the acting is strictly from the '30s era of overacting--not too much of a flaw in this case because the story cries for some good old melodramatic turns.During the opening sequences, LIONEL BARRYMORE acts up a storm as Billy Bones, the man who has the whole tavern singing "Sixteen Men On a Dead Man's Chest". His look of astonishment at seeing his assassin enter the tavern is priceless. Unfortunately, his role is a comparatively brief one.JACKIE COOPER resorts to too much pouting (in Shirley Temple style) to be truly effective as Jim Hawkins but does a decent enough job; WALLACE BEERY steals every scene he's in as the one-legged Long John Silver with a parrot on his shoulder; LEWIS STONE and NIGEL BRUCE do well enough in more conventional roles as high-blooded men from aristocracy; and even OTTO KRUGER, an actor I'm not particularly fond of, does one of his best jobs as Dr. Livesey, protector of the Hawkins boy, and DOUGLAS DUMBRILLE does a brilliant job as a master villain.Among the pirates, there's a good sense of adventure all the way through and the Robert Louis Stevenson story is faithfully rendered except for the sentimental ending. Nevertheless, it never quite overcomes the feeling that you're watching actors going through the motions of a pirate tale and lacks the lusty swordplay and swashbuckling fun of another sea epic, CAPTAIN BLOOD, which came out a year later. Michael Curtiz, it seems, had a better handle on this sort of adventure than Victor Fleming.