Review of The Admirable Crichton (1957) by Ardell W — 12 Nov 2011

I saw the second half of this film about 20 years ago, when I was at school. At that point, the castaways had already established their new society, so watching the entire film I was interested to see how they got to that point. Unfortunately, a lot of this was glossed over: Crichton flatly refuses to follow orders that he disagrees with, then there's a 2-year time jump. Maybe this would have worked better as a TV (mini-)series, with more time to develop the plot. Similarly, some characters are better developed than others. Lady Mary is the most interesting character, while Agatha is ... also there.

Still, it's an entertaining film, and I got sufficiently involved in the story to be frustrated at the ending. That's not a criticism of the writers, because I'm pretty sure it was deliberate. Really, I think that the point of the film is to advocate social mobility (a meritocracy) rather than complete equality.