What
was is like to live in San Francisco during World War II?
This question fascinates Scott King, writer and cinematographer
for Treasure Island, who evidently does not
want to claim credit as director. He provides a movie serial,
newsreels, and a film in black and white with authentic 1940s
sets, props, and clothing, but he was evidently inspired by
The Man Who Never Was (1956), an account of
an actual British intelligence operation in which a corpse
was dumped off the coast of Spain with false documents to
throw off the Nazis, who in turn fell for the ruse and pulled
troops out of Sicily. The story centers on two navy cryptographers,
Frank (played by Lance Baker) and Samuel (played by Nick Offerman)
who work at Treasure Island in San Francisco Bay to screen
mail. They are assigned to write letters to accompany a body
to be dumped in Japan. But the task of writing letters is
of less interest than the personal lives of the two cryptographers,
who have responded to the stress of the war with obsessive
behavior. Frank is a polygamist who marries different girls
in the belief that he can have sex without adultery. Samuel
is only aroused to engages in anal intercourse with his wife
in the presence of a naked man, whom he does not touch. The
film is punctuated with numerous short takes, cryptic and
often absurdist dialog, and ends with V-J Day. An experimental
film that got some attention at Sundance, Treasure Island
is not formulaic. Depicting Americans in the 1940s as sex
crazed but closeted, the film may be seen as an antidote to
the retrospective account in Pleasantville
(1998), though some may claim that the sexual promiscuity
of the 1940s led to the sexual repression of the 1950s. MH
I
want to comment on this film
