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One can only be thankful that Disney did not get hold of Richard Hughes' novel. The saccharine sweetness would have made one gag. The only disappointment that I had with the film was that it did not follow the book. Otherwise, this was a superb film in its own right. Anthony Quinn proved that he could play other characters than Zorba, an often overlooked fact.

The children were so prim and Victorian "proper" that their conflict with the pirates. or privateers, as they preferred to call themselves, was at time hilarious. My favorite scenes were when the children, who were on the ship for months without any means of amusing themselves other than their own devices, spooked the crew with various innocent or mischievous plays, such as pretending to do a burial at sea, and turning around the head of the ships figurehead so that it faced backwards. The superstitious sailors were terrified by what was really childish mischievous fun.

When the ship put into Tampico, where the Captain hoped to leave them behined with the local Madame, played by Lila Kedrova who seemed to have taken acting lessons from Carmen Miranda, the children were spruced up and returned to their clean clothes and with their hair combed. As the crew member doing the grooming explained: "the Captain wants you to look your best for the ladies". "What ladies?" asked the children. Under his breath the seaman muttered "You'll find out." Of course, the local ladies were the ladies of ill repute in a Godforsaken part of the Carribean where anything goes and the law would never set foot.

The beauty of the film is that it rises above the mawkish semtimentally that it could have fallen into. The Captain, Chavez, takes to the young girl, Emily, who is as feisty as they come, and she and the other children take to him. A Victorian version of the Stockholm syndrome where the captives idenity with their captors.

The story is a tragedy, as the pirates who after all, were simply making a living in the only way they knew. It wasn't even a profitable living, just a traditional, but dying, occupation. Suddenly they were stuck with some ill-disciplined little English children travelling to England to be paced in English boarding schools and "civilised", and neither side really understood the other. It was the misunderstanding that caused the problems and led to the final tragedy.

I would recommend this film to people who like to think and ponder over what is right and what is wrong, and from what perspective do we view right and wrong.

Having loved Strictly Ballroom, I was looking forward to seeing this film. I could see what the director was trying to do: The Rocky Horror Show at Studio 54 as performed by Monty Python's Flying Circus, with scenes from "Oh What a Lovely War" and "Peter Pan" thrown in for good measure, but I found it a bit too much. The colors were too vivid, the editing nauseatingly fast, the sound system seemed to have blown a fuse, and the pathetic mewing of the two leads made me nostalgic for the great days of Howard Keel and Katherine Grayson. What ever happened to singing lessons or dubbing? The singing was too week and the songs too brief for me to recognize any of the songs. I kept wondering who had given Baz Luhrman all that money to make this film.

I like both Nicole Kidman and Ewan McGregor, but I did get tired of seeing close ups of ghostly pale Nicole's smudged scarlet lipstick, and listening to her flat Australian twang. OK, I'm picky picky, but with the money she earns she could afford to take elocution and singing lessons.

The file had one truly superb scene for me: the violent Tango/Apache Dance which no low dive in Paris was ever without. It is many years since I saw one and this was excellent. The other dance scenes of the Can Can were far too brief but what little glimpse we had showed it as it likely was rather than the dressed up "tourist version". The choreography, costumes and set design were all that made this movie bearable for me.

Dame Edith Evans, one of the British theater's greatest actresses of the first half of the twentieth century, gives a brilliant performance as a lonely old lady existing in seedy rented rooms in a grimy industrial town while scraping by on National Assistance. This film should be shown to everyone on their first day of work, before they fill out their tax deferred pension withholdings. If ever there was a good lesson for putting something away for one's old age, it is this film. It is a horror story of "This is what's going to happen to you if you don't start putting something aside for your old age."

Mrs. Ross lives alone in poverty despite a family of sorts, a work-shy husband who deserted her and a son who only comes by to hide stolen loot while pretending to visit. Her rooms are a disorderly clutter of books, old newspapers, glass bottles and anything she doesn't want to throw away. Her endless days are filled with visits to the local library reading room, to keep warm; the local mission church; the police station, to complain about the neighbors; and the social security office, to beg for more public assistance; which is doled out a few shillings at a time.

To escape this grim reality Mrs. Ross builds a fantasy world not unlike Luis in "Kiss of the Spider Woman". She exists in her fantasy of a privileged upbringing as the daughter of a Bishop, living in a palace, and watching the white gloved dancers at a ball. She awaits the settling of her fantasy father's estate and the fortune from the family cattle business. When she finds stolen money hidden by her shiftless son during a quick visit, she believes that her ship has finally come home and her fantasies are reality. It is not long before the vulnerable old lady is "befriended" and robbed by a steely eyed con woman, and dumped in an alley near her home. Although the welfare people do all they can to get her back on her feet and her husband to take care of her, by the film's end she has come full circle and has resumed her daily routine and her fantasy world.

Dame Edith, who was the original "St. Joan" on stage in the 1920's, and for whom Shaw wrote "The Millionairess" is rarely off the screen and gives a faultless performance in what could otherwise be a very depressing film about poverty and loneliness. Where at first you sympathise with the old lady who has come down in the world and is now living in genteel poverty, you come to understand that she never went up in the first place, the only genteel world she ever inhabited was in her mind, and that is where she now resides.

As for an acting tour de force, just watching the way Dame Edith conveys the lowly origins of Mrs. Ross without words, as in the way she eats - out of tins - lifting large slices of bread to her mouth (where they fall apart) rather than cutting the slice to small manageable portions, licking her fingers, reading at the table - all the things considered to be bad manners. The way she conveys old tired poverty, by slipping off her shoes in the library to warm her feet on the hot pipes, is a lesson in technique that all aspiring actors should take note of. You know as you watch her slowly make her way down the cobbled streets carrying her large tote bag that this pathetic old lady is a prime target for a mugging, or a slip and fall. I would recommend this film to anyone who wants to study great acting and to those who are concerned with the plight of the elderly.