Six Close Encounters 2017 / The Blue Lagoon / USA 1980
The film I’ve chosen to show is The Blue Lagoon. I have seen this more times than I can count (though most of those times I was still in high school). What makes me come back to it isn’t only its romantic vision of an earthly paradise, but how it is also a metaphorical paradise, where young people learn about and experience love without any rules or restrictions from any larger society. It is naïve and pure by design — a rarity in cinema.
Boyd van Hoeij
As a professional film critic, I’m often asked what the best movie of all time is. My standard answer: “I hope I haven’t seen it yet because that would make my job depressing”. The film I’ve chosen to show is The Blue Lagoon, Randal Kleiser’s follow-up to his smash hit, Grease. I have seen this more times than I can count (though most of those times I was still in high school). It is not the most sophisticated, intellectually challenging or breathtakingly made film, though the music and cinematography are certainly swoon-worthy. What makes me come back to it isn’t only its romantic vision of an earthly paradise — with its sandy beaches and palm-tree silhouettes against the sunset — but how it is also a metaphorical paradise, where young people learn about and experience love without any rules or restrictions from any larger society. It is naïve and pure by design — a rarity in cinema.
Boyd van Hoeij
104 min / Color, DCP
Director Randal Kleiser
/ Screenplay Douglas Day Stewart podle románu / based on the novel by Henry De Vere Stacpoole
/ Dir. of Photography Nestor Almendros
/ Music Basil Poledouris
/ Editor Robert Gordon
/ Art Director Jon Dowding
/ Producer Randal Kleiser
/ Production Columbia Pictures
/ Cast Brooke Shields, Christopher Atkins, Leo McKern, William Daniels
/ Sales Park Circus Group
Randal Kleiser (b. 1946, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA) studied film at the University of Southern California. After years working in TV, he became a commercially successful director with his first two movies: the musical Grease (1978) and the romantic adventure based on De Vere Stacpoole’s 19th-century castaway novel The Blue Lagoon (1980). In his subsequent work as well he has sampled and combined a wide variety of popular genres with craft-like dexterity: a love story set in the Greek Isles (Summer Lovers, 1982), a humorous mosaic of tales set in small-town America (Grandview, U.S.A., 1984), science fiction (Flight of the Navigator, 1986), a sentimental comedy about a 31-year-old virgin (Getting It Right, 1989), a Jack London novel adaptation (White Fang, 1990), a fantasy comedy (Honey, I Blew Up the Kid, 1992), a mystery thriller (Shadow of a Doubt, 1998), an adventure romcom (Love Wrecked, 2005), and an adventure musical for the whole family (Red Riding Hood, 2006).
Park Circus Group
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United Kingdom
Phone: +44 141 465 7499
E-mail: [email protected]
Boyd van Hoeij
Journalist
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