Kinematografie Peter Brook

Lord of the Flies

Peter Brook
GB 1963
90 min
V'19

William Goldings Roman aus dem Jahr 1954 schildert die Entstehung autoritärer Strukturen und die Verrohung einer Gesellschaft, die die demokratischen Spielregeln zugunsten des „Rechtes des Stärkeren“ abschaft. Bedrückend ist vor allem, dass dies anhand einer Gruppe sechs- bis zwölfähriger Jungen darges- tellt wird, die sich nach einem Flugzeugabsturz ohne Erwachsene auf einer tropischen Insel wiederfinden. Brooks Adaption wurde auf Puerto Rico gefilmt, in Schwarzweiß, schnörkellos, eng angelehnt an das Buch und mit beeindruckenden jugendlichen Darstellern. Über die zeitlose Aktualität von Roman und Film gibt es (leider) keinerlei Zweifel. (Andreas Ungerböck)

 

Jean-Luc Godard famously said that all you need to make a movie is “a girl and a gun.” When Peter Brook took 35 children (none of them professionals) from the US and Britain to an island of the coast of Puerto Rico to appear in his adaptation of LORD OF THE FLIES, he has his own formulation. For his film, he suggested, the necessary in- gredients were “kids, a camera and a beach.” As Brook wrote in his autobiography, he deliberately made the film on a relatively modest budget. He knew that his backers “would have no excessive anxiety” if they lost their investment. The film, like Golding’s book, shows a bleak vision of humanity. The children are stranded in an Edenic wilderness and given the chance to create their own paradise. Instead, they turn into murde- rous little savages. Brook had looked for boys who were like the characters they had to play. “Directing was not trying to impose a characterisation. It was making the boys feel at ease,” Brook later said. He used multiple cameras, encouraged improvisation, and edited the 90 minute film from over 60 hours of footage. The result was a film of startling orig- inality which also stayed faithful to its source material. (Geofrey MacNab)

Credits
  • James Aubrey - Ralph
  • Tom Chapin - Jack
  • Hugh Edwards - Piggy
  • Roger Elwin - Roger
  • Peter Brook
  • Tom Hollyman
  • Peter Brook
  • Gerald Feil
  • Jean- Claude Lubtchansky
  • Raymond Leppard
Two Arts Ltd
Screenbound
DCP
SW
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