La vie aventureuse de Jack London

Freddy Rich's score is a lush, exciting, melodic treat for Jack London. Freddy was also known as Buddy Rich, a jazz artist. Here, though, he shows his versatility as a symphonic composer, and he was very talented in this realm. Listen to the music when he is working in the Yukon and is alone with his dog in the cabin. Very descriptive of the intense cold and his inspirations. The martial music for the Japanese march is also very impressive. There are other favorite parts for me--like when the police fight it out with the smugglers on the Oakland waterfront. This is a great score; it was nominated for an Academy Award. I think you might enjoy concentrating on the score the next time you view the film.

No need to repeat consensus points—the movie's clearly compromised by its clumsy propaganda segment. Also, it's a shame more time is not given to the rigors of the Yukon, the real basis of London's powerful prose. I wouldn't be surprised that budget constraints cramped this key phase of his life. Too bad, because London was an outdoor writer who wrote powerfully about the outdoors—something you don't get from the movie.

One scene, I think, is worth noting. That's where Prof. Hilliard ridicules student London's uncompromising literary realism. Though the screenplay doesn't elaborate, there's a background assumption to Hilliard's point of view. Namely, that American literature is dominated by the standards of its gentile, well-to-do class with refined tastes and the leisure time to both read and write. Thus, London's raw depiction of life at the bottom comes across as offensive for a number of reasons. It's that impossible leap from the immiserated bottom to the refined top that London's trying to navigate. But more importantly, he's doing it without compromising the integrity of his work.

Now, the screenplay softens this conflict by casting the kindly Davenport as the professor and having him pay tribute to London's "courage" as a budding writer. As a result, hostility to the upsurge of blue-collar writing that London represents is seriously underplayed. Perhaps that's not surprising. After all, WWII was a great national effort where class differences were submerged to the common interest.

O'Shea and Hayward are fine in their roles. However, I agree that a more honest depiction of the great writer's life awaits production. Given the richness of the material, I wonder why that hasn't happened.

"Jack London" (1943) is a film that tells some of the life of author and news correspondent, Jack London(1876-1916). His work; fish cannery, fishing boat. Jack's adventures; Alaska gold rush, educational advances, etc. are somewhat documented, but not as well as I would have liked. The script dwells on the Japanese treatment of Jack London and Russian prisoners prior to WWI. There's true information on London there, but it could be more accurate. Much of it is weak and doesn't include his political stands.

Since this movie was scripted and filmed in 1943 (mid-WWII), we need to know it was a quickly made WWII film that showed what was going on during a before WWI time. I saw it referred to as 'Japanese bashing' but we must remember we were at war and the Japanese were using their own forms of propaganda for 'America bashing'; remember their famous cartoons and 'Tokyo Rose'. Whether we agree or disagree it is in the past.

And the director, Alfred Santell, and writers, Charmian London(book) and Isaac Don Levine(script) put together a movie that they hoped reflected the spirit of "Jack London".

Michael O'Shea (born: 1906) did a great job of portraying the part of Jack. He did 19 more movies and several TV roles passing away in 1973 of a heart attack.

But a true visual treat was seeing Susan Hayward in the role of Charmian Kittredge London. She added beauty and a fiery loyalty to Michael's temperamental Jack.

Susan (born: 1918) died in 1975 of brain cancer. Susan was a great actress and you can't help but wonder what she would have contributed to the movie world had she been able to continue on.

For the first hour or so, this fictionalized biography of "Jack London" is not bad. Michael O'Shea brings some energy to the role, and in general it conveys some of the basic characteristics of its subject's life reasonably well. The last part of it was heavily tailored to the time in which it was filmed, and unfortunately it is now only of interest as an example of how badly a movie can become dated when it tries to do that.

Most of the movie is a collection of distinct experiences in London's life, tied loosely together. It works all right, and it effectively conveys the irregular nature of his lifestyle, with some courageous acts being mixed in with his involvement in disreputable and even illegal activities. The low budget nature of the production occasionally keeps some of these sequences from being more effective, but it's not bad, though it would have benefited from giving Susan Hayward and some of the other supporting cast members a little more to do.

In the last half hour or so, the story shifts its focus to a lengthy sequence that has London in Japan, reporting on the war between Japan and Russia in the early 20th century. The overt and sometimes forced condemnations of Japan make the sequence now look labored and a bit frantic, though in its time the message may have seemed to be appropriate.

There was surely a middle ground that would have allowed for brief wartime message to be inserted without getting things completely off-track. Many movies of the first half of the 1940s, in fact, do just that, and are able to hold up perfectly well today even when there are a handful of scenes or quotes that were clearly intended to have wartime significance. Jack London was a fine writer and an interesting person, but this movie ends up taking the focus too far away from him and from his life.

Jack London died in 1916 due to various illnesses and severe alcoholism. This heavily fictionalised movie opens in 1943 with the launch of the liberty ship Jack London.

This is a world war two propaganda movie rather than a warts and all biopic of a notable writer.

Jack London (Michael O'Shea) is an adventurer but the movie is really more interested in Jack London the war correspondent in the early 20th century. The war between Russia and Japan and more importantly the rise of Japan as a force to be reckoned with.

London sees at first hand of the brutality of the Japanese, some prisoners are gunned down. He hears from a Japanese commandant, of Japan's expansionist policies such as conquering China.

London wants to warn the American people about Japan's true intentions.

The movie is not very compelling. The acting is not that great, the purpose of the movie was to sell war bonds.