The Best Film Adaptation of the Best Pirate Tale.
Most film adaptations do horrible things to the books they are based on. The 1950's Disney "Treasure Island" set the tradition that continues up to "Pirates of the Carribean" that pirates wore ridiculous costumes of garish technicolor hue and spoke with preposterous accents. Robert Louis Stevenson intended TI to be a realistic portrayal of pirates in the 1700's. Stevenson's pirates are not swashbuckling heroes or buffoonish villains. Instead they are shown to be a rather pathetic and desperate set of men who, though they have undoubtedly victimized others, are victims themselves of the discriminatory social class system of the age. We see all this through the innocent eyes of Jim Hawkins, the young son of an innkeeper. Jim witnesses both the hard lot of the common seaman with its poor living conditions and harsh discipline, as well as the amiable simple-mindedness of the wealthy Squire Trelawny and his feudal collection of loyal servants.
The Heston film does a superb job of capturing the book. It features as the central prop the sailing ship "Bounty" (as the "Hispaniola"), built for the 1962 MGM 'Mutiny on the "Bounty"' and which was owned by Turner at the time. Paying intense attention to detail, the film is set in gorgeous locations both in Britain and Jamaica. The cast of British stage actors collectively deliver a flawless performance. The class conflict is subtly but firmly brought home by contrasting the polished and exquisitely dressed Squire and Dr. Livesey, (backed by their eccentric collection of "gentlemen's gentlemen") and the rough pirates with their lower-class accents and cheap, soiled garments. Charleton Heston convincingly portrays an aging Long John Silver who manages to be both menacing and sympathetic. Christian Bale wanders between the two camps with wide-eyed innocence which slowly turns to adult skepticism.
This is one of those films that makes me curse the coming of computer generated effects, because the advent of CGI means movies like this probably won't be made anymore. The fact that they really had to shoot on location, with an actual, fully-functional sailing ship adds tremendously to the realism of the movie. Nowadays a modestly-budgeted for-cable film such as this would most likely be forced to use blue screens and CG effects which would not be nearly the same. An outstanding example of this is the climatic showdown between Jim and Israel Hands as they clamber all over the deck and rigging of the ship. This scene must have been incredibly difficult to shoot on the water in the open with the wind gusting and with deck fittings in the way- not to mention having to film with the camera hoisted up on a mast- but they did it and the result is fantastic. Other technical merits are the way the film was smoothly and unobtrusively edited and the haunting score by the Chieftains.
I was 13 when I first saw this movie on TNT and have adored this film ever since, a feeling reinforced a few years later when the 'Bounty' stopped in a nearby port on a tour and I was able to go aboard her.
While writing this it occurred to me that the film may have had a bigger effect on me than I realized- for the last five years I have been a volunteer docent at a historic fort located on a small island... and a couple of times a year we stage a mock artillery battle with a replica 18th century pirate ship!