''Man Friday'' is a 1975

adventure film An adventure film is a form of adventure fiction, and is a genre of film. Subgenres of adventure films include swashbuckler films, pirate films, and survival films. Adventure films may also be combined with other film genres such as action, an ...

directed by

Jack Gold Jacob M. "Jack" Gold (28 June 1930 – 9 August 2015) was a British film and television director. He was part of the Kitchen sink realism, British realist tradition which followed the Free Cinema movement. Career Jacob M. Gold was born in ...

and starring

Peter O'Toole Peter Seamus O'Toole (; 2 August 1932 – 14 December 2013) was a British stage and film actor. He attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and began working in the theatre, gaining recognition as a Shakespearean actor at the Bristol Old Vic ...

and

Richard Roundtree Richard Roundtree (born July 9, 1942) is an American actor. Roundtree is noted as being "the first black action hero" for his portrayal of private detective John Shaft in the 1971 film '' Shaft'', and its four sequels, released between 1972 and 2 ...

. It is adapted from the 1973 play by

Adrian Mitchell Adrian Mitchell FRSL (24 October 1932 – 20 December 2008) was an English poet, novelist and playwright. A former journalist, he became a noted figure on the British Left. For almost half a century he was the foremost poet of the country's Cam ...

based on

Daniel Defoe Daniel Defoe (; born Daniel Foe; – 24 April 1731) was an English writer, trader, journalist, pamphleteer and spy. He is most famous for his novel ''Robinson Crusoe'', published in 1719, which is claimed to be second only to the Bible in its ...

's 1719 novel ''

Robinson Crusoe ''Robinson Crusoe'' () is a novel by Daniel Defoe, first published on 25 April 1719. The first edition credited the work's protagonist Robinson Crusoe as its author, leading many readers to believe he was a real person and the book a tra ...

'', but reverses the roles, portraying Crusoe as a blunt, stiff Englishman, while the native he calls

Man Friday Friday is one of the main characters of Daniel Defoe's 1719 novel ''Robinson Crusoe'' and its sequel ''The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe''. Robinson Crusoe names the man Friday, with whom he cannot at first communicate, because they fir ...

is much more intelligent and empathic. The film can be regarded as being critical of

western civilization Leonardo da Vinci's ''Vitruvian Man''. Based on the correlations of ideal Body proportions">human proportions with geometry described by the ancient Roman architect Vitruvius in Book III of his treatise ''De architectura''. image:Plato Pio-Cle ...

, against which it draws a contrasting picture of Caribbean

tribal The term tribe is used in many different contexts to refer to a category of human social group. The predominant worldwide usage of the term in English is in the discipline of anthropology. This definition is contested, in part due to conflic ...

life.

Plot

Friday and four of his friends arrive in a canoe on the island on which Crusoe has been stranded for years. When they start to consume a deceased comrade in a reverent form of ritual cannibalism, Crusoe kills Friday's friends and takes the latter to his camp as a prisoner. Friday is very quick to learn the English language. Crusoe then tries to teach him Western concepts like property, sports, punishment, fear of God and so on, but Friday's reaction is only one of bewilderment and amusement. He begins to question and mock these concepts that seem senseless and destructive to him. One day he rebels, refusing to be a slave anymore. After some conflict, Crusoe has to admit that he could not live in solitude anymore, so he concedes in regarding Friday as a human being, although not as an equal. To do so, he starts to pay Friday one

gold coin A gold coin is a coin that is made mostly or entirely of gold. Most gold coins minted since 1800 are 90–92% gold (22karat), while most of today's gold bullion coins are pure gold, such as the Britannia, Canadian Maple Leaf, and American Buffa ...

per day for his labour—an ambivalent sign of respect, as there is no use for money on the remote island. When an English ship appears, Crusoe is overjoyed. Two men arrive in a boat and are invited for dinner but it turns out that they are

slave trader The history of slavery spans many cultures, nationalities, and Slavery and religion, religions from Ancient history, ancient times to the present day. Likewise, its victims have come from many different ethnicities and religious groups. The socia ...

s who want to capture both Crusoe and Friday. So the latter collaborate in killing the intruders when their violent motives are revealed, and the ship sails away, leaving the protagonists stranded as before. For a while, a kind of friendship develops between Crusoe and Friday. Friday thinks that he maybe can teach Crusoe his more relaxed way of living, and not to be controlled by "thoughts of power, guilt and fear", which are very strong traits in Crusoe's personality. One day, Crusoe falls back into his old delusions of being a superior being. He had been trying to teach Friday in a mock-up school for a while, ridiculously complete with a chalkboard. We see that the topic of the day, written on the chalkboard, is "civilization". Obviously, for Crusoe this is a culmination point, where his concepts are ultimately confronted with those of Friday. He gets in a frenzy and binds Friday to a pole, then holds a frightful, lunatic sermon about the superiority of his ways while threatening Friday with his gun. In the end, he shoots, but not at Friday, but at his own talking parrot, which had been his sole companion before Friday's arrival. After that shocking experience, Friday gives up his attempts to change Crusoe; the friendship also ends, leaving only the relationship of Crusoe as master and Friday as a paid servant. After several years, Friday has accumulated 2,000 gold coins, the price that Crusoe once mockingly called for the hut and all his belongings. Friday now turns Crusoe's western ways against him. Catching him by surprise, he throws the gold on a table, declaring himself the owner of the material property; swiftly, he takes control of baffled Crusoe's gun, and coldly declares that the master-servant-relationship is inverted now. He forces Crusoe to build a solid raft, and both men put to sea for Friday's home island. When they have arrived there, Friday tells the story of their relationship to the gathered tribe, which reacts with astonishment and amusement about the strange ways of Crusoe. When the latter requests to join the tribe, proposing that he could teach the children, Friday strongly speaks against him, saying that "the only thing he (Crusoe) teaches is fear." So Crusoe is rejected and returns to his solitary island, where he commits suicide.

Cast

as Robinson Crusoe *

Friday Friday is the day of the week between Thursday and Saturday. In countries that adopt the traditional "Sunday-first" convention, it is the sixth day of the week. In countries adopting the ISO-defined "Monday-first" convention, it is the fifth day ...

Peter Cellier Peter Cellier (born 12 July 1928) is an English actor who has appeared in film, stage and television. He is known for his role as Sir Frank Gordon in ''Yes Minister'' and then ''Yes, Prime Minister'' in the 1980s. Early life Cellier was born i ...

as Carey * Christopher Cabot as McBain *

Joel Fluellen Joel Fluellen (December 1, 1907 – February 2, 1990) was an actor and an activist for the rights of African Americans. He appeared in the films ''The Jackie Robinson Story'', '' Perils of the Jungle'', ''Duffy of San Quentin'', ''Sitting Bull' ...

as Doctor * Sam Seabrook as Young Girl * Stanley Bennett Clay as Young Boy (as Stanley Clay)

Production

The film was based on a TV play by Adrian Mitchell which aired in 1972 as part of BBC's ''Play for Today''.

Colin Blakely Colin George Blakely (23 September 1930 – 7 May 1987) was a Northern Irish actor. He had roles in the films '' A Man for All Seasons'' (1966), ''The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes'' (1970), ''Murder on the Orient Express'' (1974), and '' Eq ...

starred. Mitchell adapted this for the stage which premiered in London in 1973. The film was one of the first financed by Lew Grade's ITC Entertainment. It was meant to be filmed in Hawaii but wound up shot in Mexico at

Puerto Vallarta Puerto Vallarta ( or simply Vallarta) is a Mexican beach resort city situated on the Pacific Ocean's Bahía de Banderas in the Mexican state of Jalisco. Puerto Vallarta is the second largest urban agglomeration in the state after the Guadala ...

due to cheaper costs. There were two weeks of rehearsal then five weeks of filming in Mexico starting December 1974.

Release and reception

The film premiered at the

1975 Cannes Film Festival The 28th Cannes Film Festival was held from 9 to 23 May 1975. The Palme d'Or went to the '' Chronique des Années de Braise'' by Mohammed Lakhdar-Hamina. In 1975, a new section, "Les Yeux fertiles", which was non-competitive, was introduced. This ...

, where director

received a nomination for the

Palme d'Or The Palme d'Or (; en, Golden Palm) is the highest prize awarded at the Cannes Film Festival. It was introduced in 1955 by the festival's organizing committee. Previously, from 1939 to 1954, the festival's highest prize was the Grand Prix du Fe ...

. The film was recut without the involvement of director Jack Gold, with a more optimistic ending added. (A scene of Crusoe suiciding at the end was removed.)

Roger Ebert Roger Joseph Ebert (; June 18, 1942 – April 4, 2013) was an American film critic, film historian, journalist, screenwriter, and author. He was a film critic for the ''Chicago Sun-Times'' from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, Ebert beca ...

wrote in the ''

Chicago Sun-Times The ''Chicago Sun-Times'' is a daily newspaper published in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Since 2022, it is the flagship paper of Chicago Public Media, and has the second largest circulation among Chicago newspapers, after the ''Chicago T ...

'' that, "Instead of a story of survival, we get a metaphor in which everything in the movie has to serve the ultimate, and murky, meaning".

References

External links