Outcast of the Islands

This exciting film is well-worth watching. It is visually rich, and the acting is consistently surprising, even from such known quantities as George Coulouris and Wilfred Hyde-White. Trevor Howard shows great emotional flexibility, a quality we don't necessarily associate with him, and Robert Morley twinkles a good deal less than usual. Whether Sir Ralph Richardson looks good throwing a punch is something you'll have to decide for yourself.

However, the camera falls in love with picturesque young boys diving into water, which delays, over-ornaments and distracts from Conrad's austere story-telling.

More importantly, two of the female characters, Mrs. Almayer and Mrs. Willems, are turned from native women into transplanted Englishwomen, leaving Aissa the only native girl involved.

This has the effect of turning the movie into a tract on the horrors of miscegenation, when Conrad's novel is clearly focused on Peter Willems' double betrayal of Tom Lingard. Willems' taking up with a native woman is treated by the film as unique, instead of the usual thing in these climes. It is shown as embodying Willems' personal moral decline, which the book would regard as nonsense.

So if you can find the film, by all means watch it and enjoy its many virtues, but the movie has less to do with one of the great novels then it pretends to.

P.S. TCM now has this film in its library!

When the Marlon Brando version of Mutiny On The Bounty came out one of the scenes I remember is Trevor Howard remonstrating with Brando after finding him getting ready to get down to business with Tarita about controlling his lust. Captain Bligh would have had little use for the character that Howard plays in Outcast Of The Island where his lust truly gets the better of him.

Those tropical islands have always had a certain allure to us westerners, but this movie based on a Joseph Conrad novel clearly demonstrates the problem of having too much of a good thing. Howard's been in the area for years and he's indulged all the readily available vices too much for too long. When he's caught stealing it might be the end for him.

But an old friend trading captain Ralph Richardson takes pity on him and takes him from Singapore to a small island where his son-in-law Robert Morley lives with wife Wendy Hiller and real life daughter Annabel Morley. Richardson deposits him there, not that Morley truly wants him.

It doesn't take long for Howard to start stirring things up and all of his schemes and machinations involve a bad case overwhelming lust for the beautiful Kerima. She certainly is something to lust over. In the end she brings about his total ruination.

The central character among the Occidentals is Howard, but Richardson and Morley aren't any model specimens either. Richardson's main concern is keeping a monopoly of the trade there. The harbor is inaccessible for the most part, but Richardson knows a narrow navigable passageway through the reefs so he monopolizes the trade. And he's pretty ruthless about keeping his monopoly.

As for Morley he's one uptight businessman. The prior relationship between Richardson and Morley is taken up in a previous Conrad novel and sad to say if you haven't read that book, a lot of it will elude the viewer.

Hiller is good, but sadly wasted in a role of a woman trapped in a bad situation. She's got an unrequited yen for Howard, but she's still a faithful wife, just like Jean Arthur in Shane.

Outcast Of The Island is a most atypical South Seas story. Conrad's vision is not fully realized by the film, but the players all do a fine job with what they are given.

Although he made a handful of worthwhile films before them and won a competitive Oscar much later, Carol Reed is still most admired for his immediate post-WWII work: ODD MAN OUT (1947), THE FALLEN IDOL (1948), THE THIRD MAN (1949) – all of them BAFTA winners – and the movie under review. The latter is the least-seen and least-regarded of the lot (perhaps because there are very few sympathetic characters in it!) but emerges a remarkable achievement nevertheless, with the director's sure hand more than evident in several striking sequences throughout. It features a great cast, all of whom deliver splendid performances: Trevor Howard (second-billed but clearly the protagonist here), Ralph Richardson, Robert Morley, Wendy Hiller, George Coulouris (as an English-speaking native!), Wilfrid Hyde-White and Frederick Valk.

While the Far East atmosphere is undeniably vivid and captivating (and John Wilcox's cinematography suitably gleaming), this never draws attention away from the complex character study at the center of Joseph Conrad's typically sea-based and compelling plot line (which works its way up to an abrupt yet memorable ending) about a rogue trader driven mad by lust for a native girl (the silent Kerima) and delusions of grandeur a' la Kurtz in the same author's "Heart Of Darkness". For the record, OUTCAST OF THE ISLANDS was also a BAFTA nominee, was apparently shorn of 8 minutes for U.S. TV screenings and is featured in cult American film-maker Monte Hellman's All-Time Top 10 list, apart from being championed by eminent movie critics like Pauline Kael and David Thomson!

This movie got short shrift critically, because it followed Carol Reed's three greatest films, "Odd Man Out," "The Fallen Idol," and "The Third Man." It's been a while since I saw it, but if you get a chance and you're a fan of Reed's adventurous filmmaking, check it out. A riveting performance by Trevor Howard -- this, plus his performances in 3rd Man and Brief Encounter show an astonishing range. Robert Morley is wonderful as well.

My most memorable moments that still haunt me years after I saw the film: Morley "singing" a lullaby to his daughter ("Schlaf, kindchen, Schlaf") as Howard approaches in the night -- and said daughter calling "Pig!" after Howard's character later in the same scene. The bonfire, and Morley's torture. And Howard spotting Kerima standing in the water among the posts -- beautiful photography.

An unjustly forgotten film. May it play at a repertory theater near you.

Probably the most exotic film of the black & white phase of Carol Reed's career as a director, 'An Outcast of the Islands' marks his venture into Conrad's heart of darkness.

Although Ralph Richardson gets star billing as Captain Lingard the film plainly belongs to Trevor Howard in the title role as Peter Willems, succumbing to the pleasures of the flesh in the feral form of Kerima.

The British empire are represented by Robert Morley who brings weighty presence to the part of Almayer (with Wendy Hiller as his wife kitted out incongruously in a cute little bonnet and carrying a parasol); while further down the cast list comes the remarkable sight of George Coulouris in blackface and veteran silent director A. V. Bramble as Kerima's father, a blind village elder who when he throws a curse on Howard draws the response - displaying typical British sang froid - "Well, that's not very helpful!"