It is one of my favorit novels. because it remains the fundamental map for define the childhood, the dictatorship, the demons living in us, the temptation, the cold and hot, in same mesure, cruelty. and the adaptation of Peter Brook represents the inspired one. first, for the great cinematography . second - for lovely reflection of the essence of Wiiliam Golding masterpiece. not the last, for the performances. you feel each line of novel in this film, in its original sound and flavor and tension. you discover, again, the powerful message of the novelist. his fears. and his pesimistic perspective about the evil and its "freshness" of childre. entire universe of shadows and cruelty is reflected in the art of Peter Brook. and scene by scene I remind the period of high school when I was first time front to this magnificent book . it is an useful film. and this fact is only real important thing. for see the world from the right angle. for create, like me, a solid imafe about the demons inside us. and for become sincere. about yourself. about the others.

After reading the book and watching the 1990 version of Lord of the Flies, I watched at last the original first black and white version of the film Lord of the Flies. The story interested me from the beginning, I thought it was fascinating and scary. This film has good pace, some wonderful black and white frames and it follows strictly the line of the book. The basic principle of civilization is being destroyed when an airplane crashes in a remote island and when the children in it take total control of their existence and survival. This film is a character study, which with clever details it helps us understand the different psychological situations of every child's mind. For example, we see Piggy wears his clothes until the end of the film, until the minute he dies. He is one of the most peaceful and logical characters in the island, and also he never becomes violent or savage. We see also, kids which are naked or painted in the face and body, signs of a more rapid evolution in disorder and disobedience.

Fifty some years later, this Golding film is a reminder of the bankruptcy of England's understanding of itself. As one of the 3-4 greatest colonial countries of post-Middle Ages Europe, we would think the genocidal policies of Europe in various "new worlds" would have caused educated, intelligent people to ask questions about that history. Here we have an England that slaughtered and conquered and enslaved Africans and inflicted incalculable damage on Caribbeans, North American indigenous, Australian indigenous, and Asian cultures. But in this film book of 1954 and film of 1963, neither Golding nor Brook can see the way clear to including a single child of color. Why? Because apparently the issue of genocide and centuries of terror is a matter for white folk to decide.The Golding story is a British bourgeois wet dream of the failure to "civilize" the savage world, enacted of course by all white historical actors.To be precise here, Golding imagines here and in other works that there lurks in the uncivilized a murderous savagery that can only be corralled by western civilization. Regrettably, western civ has been too weak, too uncertain, and too incompetent to truly finish the world-caging task.Had Golding, and Brook, read something besides British self-congratulatory histories and seen something besides white "civilizing" westerns, they might have noticed that the true savagery of the last 600 years, or even last 2500 if we want to be a little comprehensive, originated in Europe. Always. And then Europe proceeded to genocide the world, only to find in 1930 the chickens had come home to roost. That the evil inherent in European supremacist values and social structures had faced off in Europe's very viscera. It refined its millennia of fascist practice and proceeded to genocide itself.That history, that euro-characteristic of supremacy -- supremacy of religion, of color, of culture, of gender, of values -- was the cause of it's even as yet unrestored, unreparationed evil. The very conception of The Lord of the Flies is a confident moralizing that at least a couple of white euro-men know the secret of evil. When, at least in 1954 and 1963, they hadn't the vaguest clue about their origins, but were in fact, stranded boys wandering in the arts, perpetuating the mythologies that wove back at least to "renaissance" Europe, or to fascist Rome, or to hypocritically un-"democratic" Greece, and indeed to the whole notion of "civilization" itself.It would have been instructive if Goldling and Brook had at some time tried to research the deep history of human tribes, how we lived for 40,000 years before the urbanization, which we call civilization, began. It was certainly the rulers and thinkers and "artists" and armies of "civilization" that destroyed tribes where ever they went. Perhaps, had they listened, they might have learned something about what it means to be a be a human being on this planet.

Lord of the Flies (1963) is the type of movie that only comes around every decade or so. It's a film that perfectly relays the message of the source material without being too preachy. This film was released in 1963, 20 years after the release of color TV and film. The use of black and white film as opposed to color was a choice made by director Peter Brooks to keep the focus on the story as opposed to the visuals. In a world of film where flashy explosions and dazzling visuals take precedence over the story, Lord of the Flies is a breath of fresh air. Take Avatar (2009) for example. The story took a backseat to the revolutionary visuals. Lord of the Flies' visuals may not look very appealing to the modern day viewer, but they excel in invoking emotion and telling the story.The purpose of this film was not to entertain but to relay the message that Golding pushed in Lord of the Flies. Take the deaths of Piggy and Simon for example. Both had extremely graphic deaths in the book, but this wasn't carried over to this film. Instead, Brooks None of the boys in this film were experienced actors. They were chosen for their likeness to the individual characters. The only complaint I have with this film is that it didn't recognize the amount of time that passed while they were on the island. According to Golding himself, the book took place over the course of three months. According to Brooks, the story takes place over a long weekend. This led to the removal of several key symbols that heavily contributed to the book. However, considering the era in which this movie was made, it's easy to see how they couldn't portray this. I also wished they included the dialogue between Simon and the Beast, but again this was a conscious choice by Brooks to keep the dialogue internal. If you have read this book, and wish to see a film version, I highly recommend this one over the 1990 version.