Krakatoa, East of Java facts for kids
Quick facts for kids Krakatoa, East of Java |
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Theatrical release poster
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| Directed by | Bernard L. Kowalski |
| Produced by | William R. Forman Philip Yordan |
| Written by | Bernard Gordon Clifford Newton Gould |
| Starring | Maximilian Schell Diane Baker Brian Keith Sal Mineo Sumi Haru |
| Music by | Frank De Vol Mack David |
| Studio | Security Pictures |
| Distributed by | Cinerama Releasing Corporation |
| Release date(s) | December 26, 1968 (Sweden) January 9, 1969 (Tokyo) May 14, 1969 (United States) |
| Running time | 131 min |
| Language | English |
| Money made | $3.7 million (US/Canada rentals) |
Krakatoa, East of Java is a 1968 American disaster film starring Maximilian Schell and Brian Keith. During the 1970s, the film was re-released under the title Volcano.
The story is loosely based on events surrounding the 1883 eruption of the volcano on the island of Krakatoa, with the characters engaged in the recovery of a cargo of pearls from a shipwreck perilously close to the volcano.
The film was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Special Visual Effects.
Famously, the movie's title is inaccurate: Krakatoa actually is west of Java, but the movie's producers thought that "East" was a more atmospheric word, as Krakatoa is located in the Far East.
Contents
Cast
(as given in end credits)
- Maximilian Schell as Captain Chris Hanson
- Diane Baker as Laura Travis
- Brian Keith as Harry Connerly
- Barbara Werle as Charley Adams
- Sal Mineo as Leoncavallo Borghese
- Rossano Brazzi as Giovanni Borghese
- John Leyton as Dr. Douglas Rigby
- J.D. Cannon as Lester Danzig
- Jacqui Chan as Toshi
- Rob't Hall as Guard [spelled "Robert" in opening credits]
- Victoria Young as Kiko
- Marc Lawrence as Mr. Jacobs (First Mate)
- Midori Arimoto as Midori
- Niall Macginnis as Harbor Master (David)
- Joseph Hann as Mr. Kuan (Second Mate)
- Sumi Haru as Sumi
- Geoffrey Holder as Sailor
- Alan Hoskins as Jan
- Peter Kowalski as Peter Travis
Additionally, Peter Graves is listed in the opening credits.
Production
Special effects
In an unusual approach to making the film, the producers of Krakatoa, East of Java had the special effects scenes shot before the script had been completed. The script then was written so as to incorporate the special effects sequences.
The French film director, art director, production designer, set designer, and screenwriter Eugène Lourié had worked for the film's producers as art and special-effects director for the 1965 movie Crack in the World, and they hired him to create the special effects for Krakatoa, East of Java.
In 1965, Lourié scouted the coast of Spain for a suitable steamer for use in the film as the fictional Batavia Queen; ultimately he chose a cargo ship – a former passenger-cargo ship employed as a tramp steamer between Spain and Morocco – he found unloading coal at a pier in Bilbao whose captain said she had been built in England sometime around 1880.
Lourié had the steamer remodeled in Málaga, Spain, at a shipyard which transformed her into the Batavia Queen by increasing the height of her funnel and masts and installing new yards on her masts and a new bowsprit and carved wooden figurehead on her bow. The steamer also was provided with functioning sails for her masts and yards.
For special effects, Lourié's team constructed two models of the modified steamer, a one-to-ten-scale model that was 18 feet (5.5 meters) long, and, for long shots of the Batavia Queen as she approaches Krakatoa, a one-to-twenty-scale model. The latter proved too small to provide realistic effects, so Lourié chose not to use it in the film, instead using only the larger model.
After considering a water tank in Malta, Lourié chose the water tank he had used for the 1964 film Flight from Ashiya at Cinecittà in Rome to film special effects sequences depicting the Batavia Queen at sea. The tank was approximately 300 by 400 feet (91 by 122 meters) in area and had a sky backing of 70 feet (21 meters). The sequences were filmed using three Super Panavision 70 cameras running at three times normal speed to make the movements of the miniatures more realistic, although the cameras were not designed for such work and often overheated and required repairs. Lourié tried to disguise the miniature Batavia Queen's lack of a crew or passengers as she gets underway for Palembang, slowly picking her way through a narrow passage under a rain of lava bombs while Krakatoa erupts nearby, by enveloping her in smoke. For the final sequence in which the Batavia Queen rides out a very large tsunami at sea, Lourié's team spent three days filming the model in the water tank in extreme conditions, creating large waves through the use of 35-foot (10.6-meter) dump tanks with a capacity of 2,600 gallons (9,842 liters), spraying water into the tank with powerful fire hoses, and employing a wind machine to disturb the water's surface.
For sequences in which live actors are seen against a village in the background, the film employed traveling mattes in the foreground and miniatures in the background.
Alex Weldon created the pyrotechnic sequences of Krakatoa erupting and, eventually, exploding. Scenes of the volcano erupting in the distance were created using a split screen, with real footage of the ocean in the lower part of the frame and a flopped volcano miniature reflection added above it in an optical printer.
The visual effects, relying entirely on in-camera model work, are still impressive today and considered an immense achievement by 1969 standards, enough so for it to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects. It lost to Marooned.
Lourié himself makes a non-speaking cameo appearance in Krakatoa, East of Java, portraying a lighthouse keeper on the coast of Java who observes Krakatoa's final, cataclysmic explosion and enters the lighthouse to send news of it by telegraph.
Yordan's Departure
In addition to its challenging special effects, the makers of Krakatoa, East of Java encountered various difficulties during the film's production. Producer Philip Yordan dropped out of the production after its special effects had already been shot, and a new associate producer came on board who commissioned a new script.
These changes in leadership led to conceptual changes that created some inconsistency in tone and odd moments in the finished film.
Title
During production of Krakatoa, East of Java, its producers became aware that Krakatoa is, in fact, west of Java – and east of Sumatra. (Mount Tambora, on Sumbawa, much less well known than Krakatoa despite its own – and even larger – cataclysmic explosion in 1815, is the violent volcano east of Java.) Despite the geographic error in the film's title, its makers chose to leave it unchanged, apparently believing that it was a more exotic title than "Krakatoa, West of Java." Furthermore, the film aided in popularizing the spelling "Krakatoa", as opposed to the Indonesian spelling "Krakatau."
Film format
Krakatoa, East of Java was filmed in Super Panavision 70 (with some scenes filmed in Todd-AO), and presented in 70 mm Cinerama in some cinemas. Appearing in cinemas as interest in Cinerama's widescreen format waned, it is the only disaster movie ever to appear in the format.
Novelization
Michael Avallone wrote a novelization of the movie with the same title.
Historical inaccuracy
The catastrophic 1883 eruption of Krakatoa destroyed most of the uninhabited island and generated tsunamis exceeding 30 meters (100 feet) in height that struck the western coast of Java and southern coast of Sumatra, killing about 35,000 people, while a pyroclastic flow from the volcano that traveled across the Sunda Strait killed about another 1,000 people on Sumatra. Krakatoa, East of Java is only very loosely based on the actual events surrounding the eruption, which it uses merely as a backdrop for its storyline.
Hanson's statement early in the film that Krakatoa had been quiet for 200 years is accurate – the last eruption prior to 1883 appears to have been in 1680 – and his view that the ongoing volcanic activity on the island, which had begun in May 1883, did not pose a threat to anyone not actually on Krakatoa itself reflected the attitude of many people in the area during the summer of 1883, some of whom treated the erupting volcano as a tourist attraction.
Krakatoa is actually located west, not east, of Java.
The Batavia Queen appears to require at least three days to make the voyage from Anjer to Krakatoa. In fact, the two locations are only 31 miles (50 km) apart, and the ship could have made the voyage in a few hours.
The beginning sequence of the film depicts the fictional mission school at Palembang as lying within sight of Krakatoa; in fact, Palembang lies 367 kilometers (228 miles) from Krakatoa. Late in the film, when the Batavia Queen arrives off Palembang in search of Peter Travis, Palembang appears to be along the coast of Sumatra; however, Palembang, while accessible to ships via the Musi River, lies well inland. The Batavia Queen finds the mission school in ruins and ablaze because of Krakatoa's eruption; although Krakatoa's eruption was audible in Palembang and the air pressure wave from its final explosion was strong enough to shake the walls of houses and cause cracks to appear in some, the town did not suffer the serious damage implied by the condition of the mission school in the film.
The violent and continuous explosions on Krakatoa as the Batavia Queen steams from Krakatoa to Palembang and then to the vicinity of Anjer late in the movie appear to depict the final, cataclysmic eruption of the volcano on 26–27 August 1883. The huge tsunami that engulfs Anjer and its lighthouse in the film's climactic sequence is consistent with the wave that struck the west coast of Java on the morning of 27 August 1883, rising to a height of 40 meters (135 feet) at Merak and destroying both Anjer – where it was 10 meters (33 feet) tall – and the Fourth Point Lighthouse.
While the Batavia Queen, her passengers and crew, and the story of her voyage are entirely fictitious, her experience in encountering the tsunami at sea at the end of the film bears a striking resemblance to that of the interisland steamer Gouverneur-Generaal Loudon, which rode out a very large tsunami while steaming in the Sunda Strait on the morning of 27 August 1883.
The movie's depiction of the salvage participants dividing up the pearls among themselves is legally flawed. The pearls are not found on the wreck; they are later located in the possession of Laura's son. Nevertheless, the salvage partners divide the treasure equally. According to maritime law, the pearls are not salvage and are the legal property of the boy. The salvage partners have no right to the pearls.
Later releases
Reprocessed in "Feelarama," a version of the then-popular Sensurround, the movie was re-released under the title Volcano during the 1970s.
Although it originally had a running time of 127 minutes (not counting overture, intermission, and exit music included in the 1969 theatrical release), the movie has often been seen since then on television and in 16-mm prints in a truncated 101-minute version, with some scenes shortened or deleted. In the 101-minute version, the sequences showing key passengers arriving aboard the Batavia Queen at Anjer and the voyage of the Batavia Queen's lifeboat to Anjer are shortened, while the opening sequence showing terrified children at the mission school in Palembang, Charley's song for Connerly in their stateroom, and Charley's tearful pleas to Hanson to have Connerly set free from the box suspended above the Batavia Queen's deck are missing.
Home media
Krakatoa, East of Java was released by MGM Home Video on March 22, 2005, as a Region 1 widescreen DVD.
See also
In Spanish: Krakatoa: al este de Java para niños
