bkoganbing Thunder Rock is the place where a jaded idealist played by Michael Redgrave has assigned himself in the true keepers of the lighthouse tradition. A curious place also he's put himself, miles away from the war he saw coming, on an island in the middle of Lake Michigan in the USA.There's a plaque on the wall of lighthouse which commemorates the sinking of a packet steamer Land of Lakes during a storm on the lake with all hands lost in 1849. To pass away the lonely hours at the lighthouse, Redgrave has recreated several of the deceased passengers as characters whom he converses with. Only the ship's captain Finlay Currie knows he's dead, the others just think they're stranded on his island waiting for a storm to clear.Redgrave's come to a personal crisis of sorts, the supervisors want him to take some overdue leave. The leave policy is there so people don't start making imaginary friends like because that's usually a ticket to the rubber room. And there's the real crisis of the oncoming World War which Redgrave tried to tell an uncaring public and its leaders about and now he's withdrawn into being the ultimate isolationist.On the night that the action of this play takes place, Redgrave's imaginary friends start giving some unexpected answers to questions and not something that his own mind creations would give out with. The ghosts if indeed that's what they were learn their fate and Redgrave learns his responsibility. And it's not on Thunder Rock.The play was put on by the Group Theater on Broadway in 1939 when the war was just beginning and it ran only 23 performances. The film added quite a bit to get it out of the living room of the lighthouse where all the action takes place on stage. Redgrave who made sensitive and principled characters a specialty in his career gives one of his best performances in Thunder Rock. James Mason is also in this film playing a real friend of Redgrave's who starts wondering about his sanity when Redgrave tells him about his imaginary group of dead friends off the Land of Lakes. The characters are deeply etched to make up for a rather static lack of plot.A British film set in Lake Michigan, who'd have believed it and also believed it was good.

whpratt1 Enjoyed this film from 1942 which I have never seen over the years and it captured my attention from the beginning to the very end. It concerns an anti-fascist journalist named David Charleston, (Michael Redgrave) who is a reporter for a newspaper in Canada and he has traveled in Europe and has discovered that Hitler is starting trouble in Germany and there is reason to believe that Japan is also starting problems in China. David has great insight and tries to tell the English people about the threat of Hitler's Germany and to prepare for war in the early 1930's. David writes many books trying to tell the world that they are in big trouble and then decides to retire to a lighthouse in Michigan on the Great Lakes. A good friend of David, named Streeter, (James Mason) visits David at the lighthouse and wants to find out why David never cashes his pay checks for months. Streeter gets upset with the way that David is acting and finds out that he is communicating with dead people that had a shipwreck ninety years ago in the great lakes and in his own mind they are alive and talking to him. These people were European immigrants who wanted to come to America and at the lighthouse there is a Commemorative Tablet speaking about this shipwrecked crew members. This is a very deep and wonderful film with a great story to tell.

theowinthrop David Charleston (Michael Redgrave) is an anti-Fascist who spent the entire 1930s warning the Western World of the threat of Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Japan. But nothing was done, and in 1940 the world is teetering on the verge of falling into the hands of these three monstrous regimes. But Charleston has gotten fed up with being "Cassandra" (the Greek seer who was doomed to always foretell the future but never be believed). He has gotten an appointment to taking care of a lighthouse in the Great Lakes, at Thunder Rock, and cynically cuts himself off from mankind.Not totally though. He has discovered the remains of papers that concern the lives of the passenger and crew of a sailing ship, the Lady of the Lakes, which hit a reef near the site of the lighthouse in 1850, killing everyone on board. Reading of their lives he has reconstructed the lives of seven people and imagines what they were like. So they "entertain" him, by going through their normal behavior and set speeches. In particular a Doctor and his daughter (Frederick Valk and Lili Palmer) fleeing from the militarism of Germany. Valk was working on anesthesia and Palmer hoped to find a new home and a future (i.e., a husband and family) when the tragedy occurred. Redgrave takes a fancy to Palmer, and in his conversations she shows she is equally interested in him. But all of these ghosts (except the ship's Captain, Finlay Currie) are unaware that it is no longer 1850, and that they are all dead.The crisis of the film is when Currie (who has assisted in this mental game with Redgrave) gets tired about it because Redgrave has turned the characters into caricatures and not real people. When this happens he berates Redgrave for misusing his powerful imagination. Redgrave agrees to allow them more outspoken freedom of action. But when they are more outspoken, they ask questions about the time they are in and the world as it is. Redgrave gets fed up and (despite warnings from Currie) allows Palmer to read a plaque on the wall that describes the shipwreck and the loss of everyone on board. He then tells them that the civilization as they knew it is ending, and that he has gone into the lighthouse to avoid seeing it end close up. His disillusionment is expressed to them, and then he adds that now that he has revealed the truth he sees no further use in having them around. As they are figments of his imagination he will no longer need them and they can now disappear. Redgrave is seen concentrating. Only they don't disappear.Valk confronts him, and forces Redgrave to compare them with himself. Did civilization cease in the 19th Century due to their deaths? Is any one man (a Darwin, a Lincoln) so essential for change that without him or her change will never occur? Is isolation the answer to facing the future or to stand up and act?I was fortunate back in the 1970s to see a stage production of THUNDER ROCK in Manhattan at the Equity Library Theatre on W. 103rd Street. The play was shorter in cast than this film version (which builds up the stupidity that Redgrave's character faced in the 1930s, leading to his cynical viewpoint). But the effect of the play was still strong then as when it first appeared in the 1940s. Civilization is always facing some disaster - but as long as someone speaks out and acts it can continue to survive.

bob the moo When the authorities discover a lighthouse keeper is not cashing his paychecks, they go to visit him to make sure he is OK. One of the visitors gets into a chat with the lighthouse keeper, David Charleston and discovers that his desire to stay in the lighthouse is based on the fact that he is in contact with the ghosts from a ship that sunk many years ago; although the ghosts do not know they are dead. Charleston hides away - having been frustrated by those in power ignoring his warnings about fascism. However he finds that each passenger has had similar experiences that he, with the benefit of future knowledge, can learn from.The point of this film is both obvious but also too obscure. The message of not giving up is laboured at the end, but for the majority of the film, it is hidden and damages the early meaning of the film. The pre-war setting is a morale boosting tale of sticking at it - for we never know what tomorrow will bring; it delivers a reasonable tale but I found it hard to get into the stories of the various passengers as they were not characters I was given a lot of time to get into and care about. The stuff with Charleston himself works better as I cared about him due to the time spent with him.The film is very stagy however, it doesn't really flow very well at times and the best scenes are played out as if in a theatre. It is rather heavy at times but it still works if you know what to expect. The cast is OK but really it is all Redgrave's film. He exaggerates his performance as if he is on a stage and needing to project to the back row, but he is still very good. Mason has a minor role but always has such a good presence that it is hard to fault him. The support cast of passengers is less assured and really never get close to being real people - instead their dialogue and stories are too heavily laden with meaning.Overall this is a reasonably good propaganda. It has more meaning and human pathos than most WWII propaganda films as it is not anti-enemy but pro-spirit and persistence. It may all be a little heavy and too stagy but it is enjoyable if you can do enough to get past the heavy message and some overly worthy acting.