Review of Treasure Island

Being a fan of Robert Louis Stevenson's immortal classic and having seen a great number of screen adaptations of this tale, I am probably hard to please but this version is, though not perfect, an absorbing and satisfying one with one's attention never flagging and some really exciting action set pieces. Prolific film director, Victor Fleming who went on to helm The Wizard of Oz and Gone With The Wind, back to back (!) in 1939 and another Stevenson tale, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde in 1941, does an excellent job in bringing the book to the screen, retaining all the important plot points and marshalling a very fine cast. This film is not perhaps as well cast as the 1990 TV film where for me, the characters really did look like how I had imagined them from the story but it goes one better in it's 'antagonist'; Wallace Beery is quite superb as Long John Silver, charismatic and full of roguish charm and he has comic chops, too that make for a wonderfully rounded character, completed by a deep, alcohol raddled voice. I believe he was born to play this part. He and the other pirates could perhaps be more sinister and Jackie Cooper as Jim, less mannered, but it is a film of it's time. That's not to say Cooper is not good, he has strength and confidence that is very watchable. The scenes at the Admiral Benbow Inn at the beginning could use more atmosphere but there is still good work from Lionel Barrymore as the drunken old sea dog Billy Bones and from William V Mong as the unsettling, blind Pew- his demise under a carriage being wonderfully grotesque as you see his body literally crushed under the wheels! Other great action set pieces include Jim blasting an oncoming Israel Hands (Douglass Dumbrille) from the rigging with a flintlock and the battle at the stockade between the pirates and our heroes where muskets are discharged and cutlasses brandished. Speaking of the heroes, they are more than a match for the buccaneers in the acting stakes; Otto Kruger is sympathetic and authoritative as Dr Livesey, Lewis Stone brings gravitas and Pepper to the role of Captain Smollett, Nigel Bruce gives a joyful exuberance to Squire Trelawney and Charles 'Chic' Sale is endearingly eccentric as Ben Gunn.