Director James B. Clark, producer Robert B. Radnitz and everybody involved must have had very good intentions in adapting Scott O'Dell's book, based on what happened to Juana María, a Nicoleño Native American who was abandoned on an island in California when she was 12 years old, and lived there for 18 years during the 19th century; and I also guess there was something attractive in the way it was told because I had never forgotten about it, after seeing it in 1964. For this version, the character must be at least 18 years old, she is pretty and called Karana, played by Celia Kaye (once married to director John Milius). The movie did very well at the box office then, but understandably nobody knows about it today. A tale of human persistence and survival, it was given "the Disney touch" after a strong first act in which the chief of Karana's tribe (who happens to be her father, a handsome man who also recites the cosmogony of the tribe) is killed by white hunters led by an ugly Russian captain (George Kennedy). Once she is by herself, Karana goes hunting and fishing, argues with dogs, becomes friends with parrots and a seal, talks to herself and is neither sick, hurt or swollen, nor must suffer storms, droughts, or tremors in 18 years. She meets a girl from another tribe, Tutok (Ann Daniels, in her only screen appearance, it seems), and this time in 2021 I thought "oh, how modern to insinuate a lesbian relationship in a Hollywood 1964 movie", but, no, Karana treats her dog as passionately as she begs Tutok to stay with her in the island. (Karana neither ages, now that I think of it...) However, and despite the glamourization of Juana María's hard true story, the 1964 movie corresponded well to the ways of the hippie generation, so I suppose that is why it was well received. It might be appealing to millennials too, I think, for all the animals, healthy diets, open door activity and (forced) uprightness around.
Review of Island of the Blue Dolphins
