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Lord Jim (1965 film)

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This article is about the film. For the novel the film was based on, see Lord Jim. For other uses, see Lord Jim (disambiguation).
Lord Jim
Original film poster by Bob Peak and Howard Terpning
Directed byRichard Brooks
Screenplay byRichard Brooks
Based onLord Jim
(1900 novel)
by Joseph Conrad
Produced byRichard Brooks
Starring
CinematographyFreddie Young
Edited byAlan Osbiston
Music byBronisław Kaper
Production
companies
Distributed byColumbia Pictures
Release dates
  • 15 February 1965 (1965-02-15) (Royal Film Performance)
  • 16 February 1965 (1965-02-16) (UK)
  • 25 February 1965 (1965-02-25) (US)
Running time
154 minutes
Country
    • United Kingdom
    • United States
LanguageEnglish
Box office$5,000,000 (US/ Canada rentals)[1]

Lord Jim is a 1965 adventure film written, directed, and produced by Richard Brooks. It is the second film adaptation of the 1900 novel by Joseph Conrad, following a 1925 silent film. The film stars Peter O'Toole, James Mason, Curt Jürgens, Eli Wallach, Jack Hawkins, Paul Lukas, Akim Tamiroff, Juzo Itami and Daliah Lavi.

The film premiered with a Royal Film Performance on February 15, 1965. Distributed by Columbia Pictures,[2] Lord Jim received a lukewarm critical response and was a commercial disappointment. Nonetheless, it received two BAFTA Award nominations, for Best Art Direction and Best Cinematography.

Plot

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In 1899, Jim is a promising young English merchant seaman who rises to first officer under Captain Charles Marlow. However, Jim is injured and left at Java. When he is fit again, he signs on with the first available ship, a dilapidated freighter called the SS Patna, crammed with hundreds of Muslims on a pilgrimage to Mecca. When a storm threatens the leaking ship, the crew panics and takes to the lifeboats, abandoning their passengers; in a moment of weakness, Jim joins them.

When they reach port, the sailors are stunned to find an intact Patna already there before them. The rest of the crew disappears, but Jim insists on confessing his guilt at an official inquiry and is stripped of his sailing papers. Filled with self-loathing, Jim becomes a drifter.

One day, Jim saves a boatload of gunpowder from sabotage. Stein, the cargo's owner, offers him an extremely dangerous job: transporting it and some rifles by river to distant Patusan to help Stein's old friend, the town's chief Du-Ramin, lead an uprising against bandits led by a local warlord named The General.

When saloon keeper Schomberg is bribed to deny Stein the use of the motorboat he had promised, Jim takes a sailboat with two native crewmen, leaving the aged Stein behind. As they near their destination, one of the crewmen reveals himself to be working for the General. He kills the other sailor and flees to warn the General. Jim manages to hide the cargo before he is captured.

Jim is tortured but refuses to divulge the location. This surprises Cornelius, the drunken, cowardly agent of Stein's trading company who has joined the general. That night, Jewel, a native girl, leads Jim's rescue.

Jim distributes the arms and plans the attack on the General's stockade. He is assisted by Dain Waris, Du-Ramin's son. After much bloody fighting, Jim delivers the crushing blow, pushing a barrel of gunpowder through a hail of bullets into the bandits' final stronghold, blowing it up along with the General. Only Cornelius survives, hiding in a secret underground room with the General's hidden treasure. Jim is hailed as a hero. Du-Ramin bestows the title tuan on him, which translates as "Lord".

Jim is content to live in Patusan with Jewel. Cornelius and Schomberg recruit notorious cut-throat "Gentleman" Duncan Brown and his men to steal the treasure, and in the course of this they are detected and cornered. At an impasse, Brown offers to leave peacefully, but the village does not trust him. Jim insists they be allowed to go, offering his own life as forfeit if anyone is killed as a result. As Brown and his men feign to leave, under cover of heavy fog, they make one last attempt at the treasure. Waris and Jim dispatch them, although Waris is mortally wounded.

Afterward, Stein pleads with Du-Ramin to spare Jim. Du-Ramin agrees if Jim leaves the following morning. Stein urges Jim to leave, but he refuses. The following morning as the funeral procession for the dead villagers starts, Jim walks up to Du-Ramin and waits, taking in the village's beauty. Du-Ramin shoots him and Jim's body is added to the procession, which ends in the cremation of the dead.

Cast

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Production

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Richard Brooks optioned the Joseph Conrad novel Lord Jim in 1957.[3] He originally sought Albert Finney as Jim, Toshiro Mifune as The General, and Laurence Olivier as Gentleman Brown. The latter declined because he didn't want to travel to Cambodia for several weeks.

The film was made at Shepperton Studios, England, and on location in Angkor Wat, Cambodia; Hong Kong; and Malacca, Malaysia. It was photographed in Super Panavision 70 by Freddie Young.[2] In a 1971 interview,[4] Peter O'Toole spoke of some of the difficulties of location filming:

"The three months we spent in Cambodia were dreadful. Sheer hell. A nightmare. There we were, all of us, knee deep in lizards and all kinds of horrible insects. And everyone hating us. Awful."

The crew and cast of the film were joined by Cambodian translator Dith Pran, who was a liaison between Cambodians and the film-makers and cast. Later, he left the country after the 1975 Communist takeover and his own imprisonment, which were told in the 1984 film The Killing Fields with Haing S. Ngor as Pran. Denise Affonço claimed that her husband Phou Teang Seng worked on the film as a production manager.[5]

Music

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The music score by Bronisław Kaper featured the use of Gamelan musicians.

Release

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The film had its world premiere on 15 February 1965 at the Odeon Leicester Square in the West End of London as the Royal Film Performance in the presence of Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother; Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon; and Antony Armstrong-Jones, 1st Earl of Snowdon.

Reception

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The film opened to lukewarm reviews and to minimal box-office returns. Bosley Crowther of The New York Times called Lord Jim a "big, gaudy, clanging color film" that "misses at being either Conrad or sheer entertainment cinema."[6] Neither was he satisfied with O'Toole's performance, characterizing it as "so sullen, soggy, and uncertain, especially toward the end, that it is difficult to find an area of recognizable sensitivity in which one can make contact with him."[6] Variety was equally critical, stating "Brooks has teetered between making it a full-blooded, no-holds-barred adventure yarn and the fascinating psychological study that Conrad wrote."[7] O'Toole's performance was described as "self-indulgent and lacking in real depth."[7]

Cambodian Head of State and former King Norodom Sihanouk did not like the film's portrayal of Cambodia.[8] Thus, by 1966 he countered it by making the film Apsara, which was his first feature-length and color film.

The film holds a 57% rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on reviews from 14 critics.[9] The score was nominated for the American Film Institute's 2005 list AFI's 100 Years of Film Scores.[10]

Awards and nominations

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Ceremony Category Nominee Result Ref.
19th British Academy Film Awards Best Cinematography - Colour Freddie Young Nominated [11]
Best British Art Direction - Colour Geoffrey Drake Nominated [11]

Preservation

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Lord Jim was preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2000.[12]

Comic book adaption

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  • Gold Key: Lord Jim (September 1965)[13]
  • Issue #98 of Mad magazine (October 1965) parodied the film as Lord Jump.[14]

References

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  1. ^ This figure consists of anticipated rentals accruing distributors in North America. See "Big Rental Pictures of 1965", Variety, 5 January 1966 p 6
  2. ^ a b Variety film review; February 24, 1965, page 6.
  3. ^ Pryor, Thomas M. (March 4, 1957). "Novel by Halevy Will be Filmed: 'The Young Lovers' Slated for Production by Samuel Goldwyn Jr. This Year 'Lord Jim' Acquired Of Local Origin". New York Times. p. 30.
  4. ^ Photoplay Film Monthly February 1971 O'Toole, speaking with Ken Johns
  5. ^ Affonço, Denise; Affonço, Denise (2008). To the end of hell: one woman's struggle to survive Cambodia's Khmer Rouge (2. ed.). London: Reportage Press. ISBN 978-1-906702-07-6.
  6. ^ a b Bosley Crowther (February 26, 1965). "Screen: Conrad's' 'Lord Jim' Arrives:Peter O'Toole Stars in Brooks Version". The New York Times. Retrieved July 26, 2009.
  7. ^ a b "Lord Jim". Variety. December 31, 1964. Retrieved November 17, 2022.
  8. ^ Osborne, Milton (1994). Sihanouk: Prince of Light, Prince of Darkness. University of Hawaii Press. p. 177. ISBN 0-8248-1639-0.
  9. ^ Lord Jim at Rotten Tomatoes
  10. ^ "AFI's 100 Years of Film Scores Nominees" (PDF). Retrieved August 6, 2016.
  11. ^ a b "Film in 1966 | BAFTA Awards". awards.bafta.org. Archived from the original on 2020-08-05. Retrieved 2026-02-15.
  12. ^ "Preserved Projects". Academy Film Archive.
  13. ^ "Gold Key: Lord Jim". Grand Comics Database.
  14. ^ "Doug Gilford's Mad Cover Site - Mad #98".
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