THUNDER ROCK

I wasn’t expecting much from this obscure 1942 film by the Boulting brothers (Roy directed it, John produced it) especially since it seemed like it had a supernatural element to it.  

It starts with an amusing scene in Chicago of all places which serves to establish that the British lighthouse keeper at Thunder Rock in Lake Michigan is an odd cove (he hasn’t been cashing his pay cheques).

So we’re off to the lighthouse by way of a seaplane piloted by Streeter (played by James Mason) who is an old friend of Charleston, the lighthouse keeper (played by Michael Redgrave).

The two friends have an argument because Streeter disapproves of his friend trying to become a recluse when Streeter has himself enlisted in the Chinese air force to help them in their war with Japan (this film is set in 1939).

Anyway the visitors leave so that we can spend the rest of the film at the lighthouse with just Charleston for company.

Except that it’s not quite accurate to say that Charleston is alone since he converses with the  ghosts of a sea captain and several passengers of a ship that sunk ninety years earlier with no survivors.  Actually it is clear that they aren’t really ghosts but rather are characters that Charleston has created in his imagination.  

In a brief montage sequence we learn that Charleston used to be a journalist who in the preceding years became very alarmed at the rise of fascism.  Becoming frustrated that his warnings were falling on deaf ears he resigned himself to the world being destroyed by the inevitable world war, and he decided to shut himself away from all of that.

The sea captain persuades him to listen to the other 'ghosts' so that Charleston can learn why they had all emigrated from Europe.

So we then get in turn three not very cheerful mini-stories.  There’s a poverty stricken couple who had to leave their children behind.  There’s a middle-aged spinster who has been campaigning unsuccessfully for women’s rights.  And there is an Austrian doctor and his family who were forced to flee because the public didn’t appreciate his experiments to find an anaesthetic.

At the end of all this woe, Charleston lambasts them all for giving up just when the human condition was on the up, giving as examples Darwin’s theory of evolution, Pasteur's transformation of medicine, and the abolition of slavery in America.

As is pointed out to him this is all a bit rich coming from someone who has himself given up on humanity,

After a lively debate on the subject of how civilisation advances and how those advances should be protected, Charleston is forced to acknowledge the errors of his ways, and the film ends on his realisation that it is up to each person to do their best to defeat the forces of evil.

As will be clear from this summary, this is certainly an unusual film but one which I thoroughly enjoyed despite its mournful air for much of its running time.

It was no surprise to learn that it was adapted from a play, written by an American (who much later received an Oscar nomination for his screenplay for ‘Khartoum’), which was a big success in Britain after flopping in the US.

Redgrave was a talented actor who was especially good at playing neurotics or unconventional types, so he is perfectly cast as Charleston, and he is ably supported by the rest of the cast which includes Finlay Currie and a young Barbara Mullen.