A High Wind in Jamaica

Jamaica, 1870. When a hurricane destroys their house, a colonial family decides to send the children to school in England. On the way, the ship they are travelling on is taken by pirates. The pirates had no intention of taking children, but that is how it works out, and five of them stay aboard. The captain, Chavez, gets used to them and grows fond of them. The children treat life on the ship as a game. Then something happens, and one of the children, without meaning to, brings about the end of the pirates. Alexander Mackendrick directs, adapting Richard Hughes's novel, with Anthony Quinn as Chavez and James Coburn as his mate. A hundred and three minutes. A film that refuses to treat childhood as an innocent place, and is uncomfortable for exactly that reason.