Cold Fusion Video Reviews

aka The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe

• Directed by Luis Bunuel
• Written by Philip Ansel Roll and Luis Bunuel, based on the novel by Daniel Dafoe
• Starring
  • Daniel O’Herlihy
  • Jaime Fernandez
  • Felipe de Alba
  • Chel Lopez
  • Jose Chavez
• Produced by Oscar Dancigers

Like too many people, I have never read Daniel Dafoe’s 1719 novel The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of York, Mariner (widely regarded as the first novel in the English language), and know only those details which have filtered down to the basic cultural strata, i.e., that Crusoe is a castaway and Friday is his local manservant. So aside from pointing out divergences which can be gleaned from the Wikipedia article on the novel, I can but confine myself to commenting on this movie, the novel’s ninth official adaptation, in and of itself, rather than as an adaptation. (Although I can surmise. I’m always good for that.)

“I bet Tom Hanks would kill for one of these.”

The opening credits, in fact, skip us past a long section of Dafoe’s meandering novel¹ with a short voiceover from Crusoe (the mighty Daniel O’Herlihy) seen over an antique map of the South Atlantic, stating that he had left England against his parents’ wishes and installed himself as a plantation owner in Brazil. Some time later he left for a slaving expedition to Africa, when a tornado (?) drove the boat off course and into rocks. Not only have we jumped ahead to the part of the story we’re really interested in, but we’ve also skipped a lot of scenes that are expensive to shoot; the first we see of Crusoe, he’s dragging himself out of the surf on this deserted island (as realized by Mexican shooting locations).

Aside from being marooned alone, Crusoe is the luckiest sumbitch ever. After a night spent sleeping in a tree, he goes out the next morning to the hulk of the ship, pinned against a rock in the surf. There are no other crewmembers or passengers, but he manages to scavenge clothing, rifles, an inexhaustible supply of gunpowder, barreled biscuits, rope, various tools, and the ship’s cat Sam; after he floats it all to shore, he also discovers that his dog Rex survived. He sets about to construct an impressive palisade and homestead built around a cave — doubly impressive when he confesses in voiceover that he’s never worked with tools before in his life.

“I can has island?”

Time goes forward in leaps and bounds as he tames and corrals wild goats, plants wheat, and keeps tinder for a signal flare on a high peak. The island has plenty of edible plants (lemons, oranges, cocoa, tobacco, and banana), and even better for him, no predator above the size of a shrew. (Unmentioned but obvious is that he also discovered a source of natural borax, because the colors in his clothing stay clear and bright.) Because he’s as civilized as civilized can be, he even continues shaving for a year. That’s when he’s stricken by fever and hallucinates his father (O’Herlihy again) scolding him for his life’s choices; when he comes out of it, he starts studying the Bible he rescued and becomes a pious congregation of one.

Time goes by, his cat wanders off as cats are wont to do, and old Rex eventually dies. And Crusoe has no human company for eighteen years (or until the forty-five minute mark) until he sees a human footprint on the beach on the far side of the island. He reacts in panic, fortifying his defenses, and its a good thing he does: the people who have arrived on the island are cannibals who come from the distant island on the horizon periodically for maneating rituals.

“I wonder if they have this in a size 16.”

It isn’t until the fifty-two minute mark that Friday (Jaime Fernandez) enters the picture: an intended victim of another cannibal campout, he’s rescued by Crusoe and falls at his feet. Friday is of course the most problematic part of the story for a modern audience; Crusoe has no qualms about assigning them a master/servant relationship, dubbing him “Friday” for the day of the week on which he encountered him, and giving his name only as “Master.” Crusoe is all of colonialism in one individual, shackling Friday’s legs when he feels distrustful of him, assigning him tasks around the homestead, and teaching him English (Crusoe of course does not reciprocate in learning any words of Friday’s native tongue, or even his name) in order to teach him from the Bible. Friday reacts with what would later be labeled “Stockholm Syndrome,” showing devotion to the Great White Savior until finally Crusoe accepts him as friend (an inferior friend, but friend nonetheless).

All of this is, I suppose, to be expected in a novel published in 1719, a hundred years before slavery was abolished in the British Empire; remember that Crusoe was shipwrecked while on a slaving mission. It’s more surprising that these story elements are retained without comment in a 1954 movie. There’s never a moment in which Crusoe is given any reason to doubt his right to rule by virtue of his skin color, nor is there any indication that Crusoe has accepted, by implication of his friendship with Friday, a more egalitarian outlook on humanity that rejects his slaver days; instead, it’s apparent that he accepts Friday as a friend because he’s the only choice Crusoe has. What with his dog being dead and all. It’s startling to realize that, as far as racial attitudes go, 1719 seems closer to 1954 than 1954 is to 2010.

“A Twinkie! My soul for a Twinkie!”

And then, after twenty-eight years, a mutinous crew putting off their captain gives Crusoe and Friday a chance to lend a helping hand (using their mysteriously plentiful supply of gunpowder) and win passage back to “civilization.”

Director Luis Bunuel had and has more of a reputation for his experimental films than for his mainstream releases (the other titles you’ll probably know are Un Chien Andalou (1929) and Belle de Jour (1967)); Robinson Crusoe was his first time working from an English-language script. It was meant as the lower half of a theatrical double bill (a “B-movie,” before that term became synonymous with exploitation), and it surprised everyone when it attracted more attention than the A-movies it was paired with, and shot its unknown lead O’Herlihy to stardom and an Oscar nomination. O’Herlihy is the kind of actor you don’t see anymore in the studios; his performance here doesn’t have the gritty verisimilitude we associate nowadays with “good” acting, but his history of stagecraft comes through; he’s captivating and sincere in a movie which, owing to its allegiance to an early and crude example of novel writing, wouldn’t benefit from method acting. One only has to compare this movie to Cast Away (2000) to see that Tom Hanks would be terrible in this movie, and O’Herlihy would be equally terrible in that one.

“In this dress, you can call me Friday Night.”

If your grievance sensors are tuned too sensitively, you won’t enjoy this movie much as pure entertainment because attitudes that were commonplace and unremarkable in the benighted early 18th century (and apparently not much more remarkable in the middle of the 20th) aren’t examined and excoriated in the light of modern correctness, but it’s still a remarkable piece of cinema history, as well as a competent primer to the good parts of Dafoe’s novel, saving you from having to wade through almost 300 pages of prose for cultural literacy’s sake.

Some Notable Totables:

• body count: 12, plus 2 game birds and 1 dog
• breasts: 0
• explosions: 1
• dream sequences: 2
• ominous thunderstorms: 4
• actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 0

1. Hey, it’s the first English-language novel; it’s no surprise that it’s not also the best.[back]