Alexander Mackendrick | A High Wind in Jamaica / 1965

horrible knowledge

by Douglas Messerli

 

Stanley Mann, Ronald Harwood, and Denis Cannan (screenplay, based on the novel by Richard Hughes), Alexander Mackendrick (director) A High Wind in Jamaica / 1965

 

Filmmaker Alexander Mackendrick’s 1965 film A High Wind in Jamaica is a truly remarkable blend of terror, humor, and tenderness that is also revolutionary in its questioning of the Victorian-based concept of childhood innocence.

    The several little monsters of the Thornton and Fernandez families are all being sent away from their Jamaican home after a hurricane has destroyed the Thornton’s island home. But what we also discover in the first scene is that these children, particularly young Emily (Deborah Baxter), have grown up on the island as nearly feral beings, who, having associated with natives and their children, know near as much about Jamaican superstitions as they do about their parents’ Christian religion, in particular the belief in the return of the dead as duppy (described, inexplicably as “stuppy” in his film), often with his face turned in the wrong direction. *

     Even during the destruction of their own home, which ends in the death of the elderly black who has worked with the family, the children seen inattentive to parental restrictions, afterward citing rhymes to protect them from the dead.

   Is it any wonder that their parents and neighbors ship their kids off to England for a more conventional education? The ship that is to take them there, however, is captained by a vainglorious puff of a man, Captain Marpole (Kenneth J. Warren) who is too busy dining in his quarters to even notice that his men have been tricked into permitting a dozen or more pirates to board, who have taken over the vessel before he can even bring himself above deck.

    Less frightened than curious, the children treat the ridiculous pirates—who throughout this film behave more childish than the children—with open-eyed wonderment, riding the lift from the cargo hold to the pirate ship as intruders take away their haul of the stolen wares and goods. The pirate captain Chavez (Anthony Quinn) and his associate Zac (James Coburn) try to determine from the absurdly incompetent Marpole whether there is any money aboard, threatening at one moment to shoot the children dead. When freed, the children sneak off to the pirate ship, bolding exploring its hold.

    Finally, as Chavez and Zac create a mock pyre on which they intend to burn Maypole, he breaks down and tells them where he has hidden 900 pounds. Even as the pirate’s leave, he exaggerates to his own men how many pirates there have been and seems more worried about his explanation of the children’s disappearance or even worry over the loss of the children.

     It is only as the pirates sail off that they discover they have hauled off the children as well. And once the children have been released from the hold, they quite literally overrun the ship, climbing the sails and sliding down the deck even during a heavy rainstorm. The boys usurp Chavez’ Napoleonic-like captain’s hat, while Emily shows up time and again even in Chavez’ quarters. In short, the pirates cannot control these young hellions any better than could their parents.

     After a late night drinking and a dancing spree the drunken adults slip into the hold where the children, including the young teenage sister, are sleeping—obviously with the intent of sexually molesting them, boys and girl both. But the complete startlement of the seeming innocents, and Emily’s stated recognition that they are drunk, after which she bites Chavez’ finger, stops them in their tracks, as they retreat in abashment.

     Indeed, as time passes, the children become more and more difficult to control, as they begin to play dangerous games on a shop of such superstitious adults. At one point, as the pirates are facing off with the specter of a British warship, a boy accidentally releases the anchor, which breaks off from its chains in the quick descent. At another point, the terrified sailors discover their shiphead woman’s figure has been turned around to represent a “stuppy.”

     Increasingly, the grown men begin to see the children as emblems of their growing bad luck.

   Stopping at the wild trading and whoring center of Tampico, the pirate’s intend to drop off the children and run. The local brothel owner, Rosa (Lila Kedrova) tells them of the outrageous reports of Captain Marpole, including his testimony that Chavez and his men have murdered all the children. Nonetheless, she is willing to put up the children until they can be rescued. But before she can even agree to the pact, Emily’s brother, staring from a window of Rosa’s bedroom, falls to the concrete courtyard below and is killed. Rosa, now faced with the death of a child in her personal realm, declares that Chavez, his crew, and the children must leave immediately.

     Back on ship, Chavez attempts, ineffectually, to explain to the children that they brother has had an accident—but the children seem already to sense the truth. Their lack of fear of sorrow over the event reminds one of the early scene in the film, and calls up the kind of childish obliviousness to the meaning of death that William Golding put forward in The Lord of the Flies or Danish directors Ernst Johansen and Lasse Nielsen hinted at in their 1975 film La’ os være (Leave Us Alone).

    Both Richard Hughes’ 1921 novel and the film upon which it was based, cast the “innocents’ as a kind of curse upon the adults, a bit like British novelist’s Ivy Compton-Burnett, in her use of children who are for more knowing and dangerous than their surrounding grownups are. These children have a horrible knowledge—based on their witnessing of the strange behaviors and inexplicable activities and deaths of the adults around them—that only attests to the hypocrisies of

the world spinning around them. If they have no name for their activities, they nonetheless recognize them as alluring and sexually based. If nothing sexual happens in this terrible voyage, every act regarding the young boys and girl in their literal hold is sexual, exciting, thrilling, and something inexpressible. Death, strangely enough, has no meaning.

    The superstitious sailors begin to plot mutiny, particularly after, when the children are ordered back into the “hold,” a heavy piece of metal falls upon Emily, whose obviously broken leg begins to become infected. Chavez takes her, once more, into his own room, mildly drugging her to allow her to sleep, and even holding her when she becomes frightened—grotesquely fathering her at the very moment when he cannot even control his own men.

     The sight of an approaching Dutch ship—another perfect target for the pirate’s plunder—calms down the rebellion; but when Chavez orders that there will be no plundering, but simply the turnover of the children into the Dutch captain’s hands, his companions because even more determined to challenge him. In order to save his friend, Zac orders Chavez to be chained, and the guns to be released.

     The Dutch captain, upon being bound, somehow escapes to the pirate boat, encountering the slightly drugged and feverish girl in Chavez’s room; grabbing up a knife while attempting to explain that he intends to cut her bonds. Mistaking his sudden approach as a terrifying hostile act, she takes up a knife and stabs him to death.

    As the pirates begin to empty the Dutch ship of its valuables, a British warship appears on the horizon and captures the pirate rig, discovering aboard not only the children but the dead Dutchman.

     In the final scenes, the children, having been reunited in England with their parents, are being questioned about their adventures aboard the pirate ship. Because of their young, they are not fully able to answer the sometimes subtle and vague accusations of the British lawyer, hoping to build a case against the accused.

     Emily is forced to appear in court, but despite her “horrible knowledge,” of events, she is unable to properly focus on the meaning of what she is asked, speaking instead of Chavez’ mention of her “drawers”—which he warns her earlier on that, if she rips them, he will be unable to mend—and, she is unable to appropriately describe her semi-conscious condition during which she, not the accused Chavez, stabbed the Dutch captain.

    Observing her distressed confusion, her father refuses to allow her any more testimony, in the process assuring the conviction and hanging of all the pirate crew. The audience alone realizes the injustice of this decision and perceives that despite their unlawful behavior, they are not guilty of what they have been charged. Only the children and we, the mute observers of history, know the truth, but the children—now being perceived as perfect Victorian innocents—cannot tell of their own secret knowledge.

     Who these monstrous innocents might become as adults is an open question: perhaps they will simply turn out to be the blind and incapable fools who their father and mother, the court, and the society as a whole represent.

       If nothing else, Mackendrick, in this film further reveals his significant talent as a director. If only he could have chopped the de rigueur Hollywood-inspired theme song composed by Larry Adler and sung by Mike LeRoy!

 

*A duppy is a spectral, often malevolent spirit in Jamaican and Caribbean folklore, originating from African (Ashanti/Ga) traditions, representing the restless dead or a haunting earthly soul. Believed to inhabit trees (especially cotton trees) or travel at night, duppies can cause mischief, inflict harm, or appear as animals and human shadows.

 

Los Angeles, February 26, 2016

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (February 2016).