Review of Mr. Robinson Crusoe

A Douglas Fairbanks vehicle, from a story by Douglas Fairbanks. A wealthy man on a yacht bets his friends he can survive alone on a tropical island while they go off to Sumatra to shoot a tiger, and he leaps overboard and swims. Most of the movie shows him creating first a stone ax and then a thousand things, hundreds of clever devices, a tree house, a turtle-powered water lifter, nets and traps, a ballista for hurling nets into the water, and even a radio. Also his pet dog, monkey, and parrot. And a romance with a pretty islander he calls Saturday (Maria Alba). There are a lot of real islanders in the movie; she's a ringer. Some people might find the depiction of the islanders condescending and offensive; I find it predictable and naive and arrogant all at once. No real plot, except he wins the bet and saves Saturday from a bad marriage to a big fellow she doesn't love.

Anyway, Fairbanks was just under 50 when he made this movie, the next to the last one he ever made, and though he's stockier and clearly aging, he's still Fairbanks, still athletic. He appears to have done some of the stunts and running and things himself, and he maintains some of the old gestures from the swashbuckling days—on the beach he stands with his legs spread and arms akimbo, and then he throws out his right arm as if pointing to the horizon. And everything makes him laugh, as if he were continuing the swashbuckling attitude of triumphant amusement from his old silent movies.