Film Record: Isle of the Dead

Still image from Isle of the Dead in Movie Makers, June 1951, 188.

Date produced: 1950

Filmmaker(s):

Timothy M. Lawler

Delores Lawer

Languages:

English

Length:

200 ft

Format:

16mm

Colour:

Kodachrome

Sound Notes:

Silent

Sound:

With music on disc.

Awards/Recognition:

ACL Ten Best 1950

Description:

"Films about national parks and monuments fall into the traps of banality with greater ease than almost any other variety of footage. It was. therefore, with great delight that the judges reviewed Timothy and Delores Lawler's Isle of the Dead. For, using the famed Boecklin painting and the equally known Rachmaninoff music as theme and atmosphere, the Lawlers have produced a cinematic tone poem from the materials offered by Yellowstone and the Badlands. Their efforts completely dominate both music and painting, which become effective substrata of the esthetic whole. The film's great virtue and its slight defects spring from the same source — the single mood that the Lawlers have worked for and have achieved." Movie Makers, Dec. 1950, 464-465.

Resources:

Discussed by Timothy Lawler in "Fancy—Not Fact!" (Movie Makers, June 1951, 188-189, 209). The article describes the film's background and its production. Film stills are shown.

Locations:

• Badlands National Park (Filming)
• Yellowstone National Park (Filming)
• Rapid City, South Dakota (Filming)

Subjects:

• National parks and reserves
• Nature
•      Geography
• North America
•      United States
•           Yellowstone national park

Genre:

• Nature

Form:

• Short

Tags:

Screenings:

• Screened by the Amateur Movie Society of Milwaukee in 1952: Milwaukee, WI
• Screened by the Brooklyn Amateur Cine Club on a Ladies Night program in 1953: Brooklyn, N.Y.

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