Carved out of the abandoned wreckage of his 'Land, Sea and Air' trilogy by literary salvage experts, 'Islands in the Stream' is Hemingway's wish-fulfilment seascape. In life, he made a nuisance of himself during World War Two: he cruised the Caribbean on an armed boat purporting to hunt German submarines, before getting in the way during the liberation of Paris. In the novel-- published long after Hemingway shot himself-- his alter ego, Tom Hudson, actually contacts the enemy and bests him, while learning lessons about selfishness and sacrifice.
Hudson is not a writer but a sculptor, and needless to say a macho one: he fashions cast-iron abstracts with a blowtorch like a real workman. It is 1940 and he has run away from Europe and its war, but he is sound at heart, treating Julius Harris as an equal. And he knows how to party, carousing in his adopted West Indian hideout on Queen Mary's birthday: a pointer to Hemingway's latter-day Anglophilia, like Hudson's friendship with David Hemmings's cockney "rummy".
Like Papa, Tom is free with advice on how to live. He has problems relating to his three sons and the divorced wife for whom he still carries a torch, but he makes his peace with them en route to a rendezvous with heroic self-sacrifice. Claire Bloom, popping in as the ex-wife, is quietly competent, no more.
It's episodic and quite conventional stuff, slipping down easily. Jerry Goldsmith's lush score is too obtrusive at times, nudging the spectator in the direction Franklin Schaffner wants. Scott's gruff, grizzled Hudson is like most of this great bear's characterisations, simpatico below his rebarbative surface. The adventurous redemption towards the end comes after a whole lot of talk and brooding, sugar-coated by gorgeous Caribbean scenery. The youngest son's struggle to land a big fish is almost all the action you get until an hour has passed.
This film was a letdown at the box office and for the main participants. Schaffner was on the creative descent which took him from 'Patton' to 'Yes, Giorgio' in 13 years. Co-star Hemmings, never the most distinctive of personalities, had begun to lose his Swinging Sixties prettiness, turning into a portly actor-director. For Scott, his Patton, 'Islands in the Stream' was intended as a comeback vehicle... but he was no longer stretching his talent .
Hudson is not a writer but a sculptor, and needless to say a macho one: he fashions cast-iron abstracts with a blowtorch like a real workman. It is 1940 and he has run away from Europe and its war, but he is sound at heart, treating Julius Harris as an equal. And he knows how to party, carousing in his adopted West Indian hideout on Queen Mary's birthday: a pointer to Hemingway's latter-day Anglophilia, like Hudson's friendship with David Hemmings's cockney "rummy".
Like Papa, Tom is free with advice on how to live. He has problems relating to his three sons and the divorced wife for whom he still carries a torch, but he makes his peace with them en route to a rendezvous with heroic self-sacrifice. Claire Bloom, popping in as the ex-wife, is quietly competent, no more.
It's episodic and quite conventional stuff, slipping down easily. Jerry Goldsmith's lush score is too obtrusive at times, nudging the spectator in the direction Franklin Schaffner wants. Scott's gruff, grizzled Hudson is like most of this great bear's characterisations, simpatico below his rebarbative surface. The adventurous redemption towards the end comes after a whole lot of talk and brooding, sugar-coated by gorgeous Caribbean scenery. The youngest son's struggle to land a big fish is almost all the action you get until an hour has passed.
This film was a letdown at the box office and for the main participants. Schaffner was on the creative descent which took him from 'Patton' to 'Yes, Giorgio' in 13 years. Co-star Hemmings, never the most distinctive of personalities, had begun to lose his Swinging Sixties prettiness, turning into a portly actor-director. For Scott, his Patton, 'Islands in the Stream' was intended as a comeback vehicle... but he was no longer stretching his talent .