Again, this was on Talking Pictures this Bank Holiday Monday afternoon 1 May 2023 – it is a film I did not know at all and can’t remember it’s release here or indeed anything about it.

However I did view it, and, true to reports, it proved quite a compelling film to watch – when I started I didn’t think I could stay the course but it sort of sucked you in and held you.

Dan O’Herlihy took the leading role in this, one of his best remembered films it seems, and he does give a very good performance in a difficult role where he is the main – and for a while – the only actor, so he effectively carries the film.

It was made in Pathécolor – Pathécolor, later renamed Pathéchrome, was an early mechanical stencil-based film tinting process for films developed by Segundo de Chomón for Pathé in the early 20th century. Among the last feature films to use this process was the Mexican film Robinson Crusoe (1954) by Spanish Director Luis Buñuel

Dan O’Herlihy as Robinson Crusoe

Robinson Crusoe tends to his sick dog – his constant and only companion at this stage of the film

Robinson Crusoe

Of the many great films Director Luis Bunuel was involved with, ROBINSON CRUSOE is one of his very best.

The film contains the feverish dream sequence where Crusoe’s father chides him for his adventurous, and, therefore, “wayward” spirit; the scene where he is so desperate to hear another human voice he goes to the Valley of the Echo and shouts a Psalm, and then walks in despair into the sea and the final scene where, leaving the island at last with Friday, he looks back for the last time, and hears the ghostly echo of his faithful, but long since dead dog, Rex, barking...

Robinson Crusoe above He is joined on the island by his ‘ Man Friday’

Robinson Crusoe

Robinson Crusoe

Robinson Crusoe

Robinson Crusoe

ABOVE and BELOW – The final ‘invasion’ but Robinson Crusoe and Friday plus the two they have helped escape from their captors, finally escape for the island

Robinson Crusoe

Robinson Crusoe

Robinson Crusoe – has been on the island for more than 18 years and has survived.

This film and the acting by Dan O’Herlihy really convey to us, the audience, the suffering he has endured from loneliness and isolation and yet also the warmth that he got from Friday and his animals. In the first few years, he had his beloved dog, Rex but when he died that must have been the darkest time that he spent there.

What a good film