Saturday, December 28, 2024

Stuff I Liked as a Kid Watch: Treasure Island (1950)





Watched:  12/27/2024
Format:  Disney+
Viewing:  Unknown
Director:  Byron Haskin


For Christmas, I gave the nephew - a voracious reader - a copy of Treasure Island.  He's now the same age I was when I checked the book out of the library, already pretty familiar with the story, thanks to the movie or movies I'd seen up to that point.  But the book stuck with me, just as the Disney film had.

I know I saw a version of Treasure Island when I was about seven years old.  It came on, and my parents decided we could stay up and watch it.  I suspect, now, it was the 1934 version, but it's possible it was the Disney version from 1950 - maybe it's more likely it was, but I also don't quite know what Houston television would have been showing on a Saturday night.  What I do know is that I eventually did watch this version when I was a bit older, maybe in school, and I was a fan.  And this has been my version ever since.

As a kid, what wasn't to like?  A young boy, not yet a teen, gets wrapped up in a grown-up adventure with pirates, ship captains, maps, all the stuff we've since incorporated into our general ideas of what pirates are supposed to be.  I know now that Stevenson himself borrowed from other books, from Robinson Crusoe and other works.  But don't we all borrow?

It also understands, in a way I think we've forgotten in kid-oriented media - that what a kid wants is to be included as an equal alongside the adults in the action.  As a mix of the expectations of kids in the era in which Robert Louis Stevenson wrote his book - released in 1881-2 as a serial and 1883 as a novel - and as the primary POV of the novel, Jim is *valued* and doesn't realize he's being handled differently, even if and when he is.

You likely know the pirate voice, which existed certainly in movies, but which Robert Newton leaned into so hard, it became something we now set a day aside for.  And you likely know things like "Pieces of Eight", X marks the spot, and other bits that were popularized and kept in the zeitgeist thanks to this movie, I think.  I've certainly seen other pirate movies of the 40's and 50's, and they rarely are about treasure hunting, and usually more about bending historical events into historical fiction (The Black SwanCaptain Blood and Against All Flags are recommended).  

It's kind of wild to see a movie like this at age 49.  The brilliance of the film is that, of course, Long John Silver is not just a pirate, but a survivor who is a silver-tongued liar and completely self-interested.  As a kid, you watch the movie through the eyes of Jim Hawkins (Bobby Driscoll), a guileless kid who wants to believe the best in everyone, though it's never quite put that way.  

In it's way, it's a coming-of-age story as Jim sees the treachery and violence of pirates first hand, and, in fact, experiences it as he's wounded by a pirate - whom he kills directly or indirectly.  Imagine *that* in a modern version.  He's really thrown in the soup with cutthroats and desperate men, sees how honor is bent and corrupted, and the risks of life at sea.  And, of course, he has his odd relationship with Long John Silver, who may use Jim as a dupe to perform his dirty-work (which, even as a kid, I went along with, and didn't quite get how Jim was being manipulated).  

Does the movie hold up?  Well - does any movie?  It's a big, splashy adventure picture that feels more of the 1940's than the 1950's, which absolutely makes sense.  Grand adventure was still in the cards for audiences of all ages at the time.  But it's also interesting to see where the bar was for family-friendly Disney entertainment five years after WWII versus the therapy-driven narratives of the past decade (that's an observation, not a complaint).  If anything, we can probably figure Jim Hawkins is coming home in need of some deep talk therapy.

I still think Long John Silver is an all-time bad guy, and weirdly complicated, especially when you think of the goons who usually interact with kids in movies.  And while the kids yearn for the mines, I think it would be interesting to see how they'd take to a modern remake of something like this that didn't think it needed Muppets to tell the story.




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