Nostalgia drew me to this rerelease. In a household where the television was mostly off, A High Wind in Jamaica was sanctioned viewing when it cropped up on BBC Sunday afternoon schedules and we watched it as a family. I must have seen it a couple of times before the age of 10 but, decades later, it was to disappoint.
Many of director Alexander Mackendrick’s films – Sweet Smell of Success and Ealing classics such as Whisky Galore! and The Ladykillers – have stood the test of time. The Ealing films clearly represent a bygone era but they maintain charm and brio. Unfortunately, A High Wind in Jamaica – made in 1965 but stylistically two decades older - has dated rather badly.
A group of Victorian children are sent back to England from the West Indies. Pirates rob the vessel and the children end up on their ship where they spend most of the film, until the English Navy catch up. The brigands are led by Hispanic, roguish – and clownish – Chavez (Antony Quinn) and a wry young James Coburn as Zac. Chavez falls in love with the kids while his men regard them as bad luck. The thing is, there’s nothing loveable about these kids. As they hurl Chavez’s hat about, mocking him like posh brats, you just wish he’d throw them overboard. He has a special affection for Emily (Deborah Baxter in her screen debut) that, while perfectly sweet, might raise an eyebrow or two in 2011.
The lack of realism isn’t an issue – these are the gentlest, nicest pirates in history – but the pacing is. The film opens with an exciting hurricane and closes with a gripping court case but in between it lacks urgency. It's a shipbound summer camp for RADA kids (plus the adolescent Martin Amis, who was dubbed) - all slapstick and mainsails. My eight-year-old daughter, who I’ve never known walk out of any film, left the room, bored, halfway through. I didn’t, of course, and waited for the court case which once brought a tear to my childish eye as Chavez’s life hangs on the testimony of the little girl. It still has a pinch of the power it once held. But that is all.
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