Virgin Island (film)

Virgin Island (U.S. title: Our Virgin Island) is a 1958 British drama film directed by Pat Jackson and starring John Cassavetes, Virginia Maskell and Sidney Poitier. It was adapted by Ring Lardner Jr. from the 1953 memoir Our Virgin Island by Robb White. The American release in 1960 followed the title of the novel.

Premise
A British woman marries an American writer in spite of her family's disapproval and goes to live with him on a tropical island.

Production
It was filmed on the British Virgin Islands.

Freddie Francis said he was "pressured" into doing the film by producer Leon Clore. "I don't think Pat Jackson particularly wanted me to do it. But Leon wanted me to do it. Not that there was any bad feeling between dear old Pat and myself but once again Pat was the wrong guy I think for the picture because the two stars were John Cassavetes and Sidney Poitier. And let's face it, those two guys with dear old Pat whose such a nice bloke and basically a documentary director, he was way off... I remember one night I was having dinner in the yacht club in one of the Virgin Islands and Sidney Poitier and Cassavetes came over and said would I take the picture over. I said listen I can't do that, you better go and speak to Leon. So anyway they went to Leon and obviously Leon said no you can't do that. So it was a very unhappy picture from that point of view."

Critical reception
The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote: "So long as this film makes no effort to create a dramatic scenc or to talk seriously to the audience it is gaily and romantically successful; the comedy is unforced and the high spirits infectious. But when John Cassavetes, always too intense, begins to sermonise on independence, Virginia Maskell to preach about the tribulations of writers, and Isabel Dean to speak an uncomfortable monologue about being cut off from life, the film discloses an unnerving capacity to raise a squirm among the more worldly audiences. Sidney Poitier's outrageous caricature of the laughing West Indian hovers constantly on the verge of the sinister, but his ebullience,vand the crisp, clean-living appeal of Miss Maskell in her less serious moods, are the film's two undeniable assets."