Swiss Family Robinson
Swiss Family Robinson is a 1960 American adventure film starring John Mills, Dorothy McGuire, James MacArthur, Janet Munro, Tommy Kirk, and Kevin Corcoran in a tale of a shipwrecked family building an island home. It was the second feature film based on the 1812 novel The Swiss Family Robinson by Johann David Wyss, a previous adaptation having been released by RKO Pictures in 1940. Directed by Ken Annakin and shot in Tobago and Pinewood Studios outside London, it was the first widescreen Walt Disney Pictures film shot with Panavision lenses; when shooting in widescreen, Disney had almost always used a matted wide screen or filmed in CinemaScope.
Plot
A ship carrying a Swiss family from Bern—Father, Mother, and their three sons, who are relocating to a colony in New Guinea to escape the Napoleonic Wars—is attacked by pirates. Abandoned by the crew, the ship eventually grounds on rocks off an uninhabited island. The family makes their way ashore along with the captain's two Great Danes. Father, eldest son Fritz, and middle son Ernst salvage supplies and livestock from the shipwreck. The pirates locate the ship, but Father scares them off by putting up a quarantine flag, signaling Bubonic plague aboard.
More details
author | Lowell S. Hawley |
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contentLocation | Insular Oceania |
director | Ken Annakin |
editor | Peter Boita |
events | sea piracy |
genre | adventure drama |
keywords | abandon asian elephant attack back to nature bern booby trap bubonic plague build cabin boy capture end great dane green anaconda hyena land bridge learn london napoleonic wars new guinea ostrich outrigger boat quicksand rescue rid sail scuttle ship captain swiss swiss people their way tree house water wheel zebra |
musicBy | Terry Gilkyson William Alwyn |
producer | Basil Keys Bill Anderson Walt Disney |
productionCompany | Walt Disney Pictures |
publisher | Buena Vista Distribution |
recordedAt | Tobago |
theme | children's children's adventure |