Song
The song, heard throughout the film, of the boys singing is Kyrie Eleison which, translated from Greek, means “Lord, have mercy”. It is an expression used in a prayer of the Christian liturgy.
Reception
Critical response
Rotten Tomatoes reported that 91% of critics have given the film a positive review based on 22 reviews, with an average rating of 8.19/10. On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 67 out of 100 based on 9 critic reviews, indicating “generally favorable reviews”.
PopMatters journalist J.C. Maçek III wrote “The true surprise in Lord of the Flies is how little these child actors actually feel like ‘child actors’. With few exceptions, the acting rarely seems to be forced or flat. This practiced, well-honed craft aids Brook’s vision of a fly on the wall approach that pulls the viewer into each scene.”
Bosley Crowther wrote in The New York Times that “the picture made from it by the writer-director Peter Brook is a curiously flat and fragmentary visualization of the original. It is loosely and jerkily constructed, in its first and middle phases, at least, and it has a strangely perfunctory, almost listless flow of narrative in most of its scenes”.
Accolades
Peter Brook was nominated for the Golden Palm at the 1963 Cannes Film Festival.
The film was named one of the Top Ten Films of the year in 1963 by the National Board of Review.
