CAPTAIN BLOOD (1935)

Country: U.S.A.

Genre(s): Action / Adventure

Director: Michael Curtiz

Cast: Errol Flynn / Olivia de Havilland / Lionel Atwill

Plot

Unjustly convicted of treason, Dr. Peter Blood is deported as a slave to the English colony of Port Royal in Jamaica.  There he leads an escape and becomes the courageous captain of a pirate ship.

What I Liked

Making impressive use of large scale sets, detailed miniatures, and explosive effects, director Michael Curtiz lets production values do their job in “Captain Blood.”  Combined with Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s heroic, trumpet-blasting soundtrack, the visuals of this film must have provided terrific escapist pleasures for Depression-ravaged Americans.  I can imagine the boys in the audience being thrilled by the surprising amount of violence, with guns going off, swords clashing, and ships exploding.  One man even gets impaled on a grappling hook!  It’s all very tame stuff to modern eyes; blood and guts are kept at a minimum.  Nevertheless, it must have seemed pretty ferocious stuff at the time.

Matching the production for zest and boldness is lead Errol Flynn in the title role.  A relative upstart at this point in his career, this was the film that established him as a commodity in Hollywood and set him on the path to becoming one of the most iconic action stars in all of movie history.  And it’s no wonder why.  He struts about the sets with all the charisma and puff-chested gallantry one wants from the hero of a 1930s pirate adventure.  In terms of sheer physical presence he is a full head taller than any other man in the picture and had the kind of dashing good looks that made women want him and men want to be him.  Today’s cynicism about heroism and movie-making has understandably cast Flynn as hokey and ridiculous, but his importance to the development of our concept of heroism cannot be underestimated.  In the same manner that John Wayne’s charisma, mannerism, and looks would come to exemplify the cowboy hero in American film a few years later, Errol Flynn became the quintessential adventurer, his look and mannerisms imitated and parodied for generations to come.

What I Didn’t Like

*spoiler alert*

More cannons, less talking, please.  I was surprised at how long it took for the high-sea adventure to get going.  The film’s title, trailer, and posters all promise a dazzling pirate epic and that eventually comes to be, but almost the entire first half of the film is character development, backstory, and superfluous conversation.  The screenwriters sure took their time in explaining the relationships between the many unnecessary characters, their parts in the drama, and their perspectives on everything that happens.  Even as the action finally does get moving, there seems an overuse of pseudo-political drama between British royals and nobles in the plot.  None of this is developed to the point of real relevance to the plot, but just seems to be there to bring in more dastardly characters and period costumes.  Nobody cares, let’s get back to the pirate wenches and sword fighting.

Likewise, the love story between Blood and Miss Bishop (played by Olivia de Havilland in the first of many pairings with Flynn) gets plenty of screen time yet has nothing to offer in originality or interest.  The dainty lady meets the gentlemanly scoundrel and is of course both offended by and attracted to him.  She saves him and then plays hard-to-get until he eventually rejects her.  Then of course they are reunited and their love for one another triumphs even as a full-scale battle erupts around them; very conventional drivel without a second of palpable emotion.

Most Memorable Scene

*spoiler alert*

Perpetual bad guy Basil Rathbone shows up about halfway through the film as a French pirate who allies himself with Blood, only to betray him over the captured Miss Bishop.  The consequential sword fight is good enough, but what really sticks in the mind is the aftermath, as Rathbone lies dead on the rocks with the waves washing over his corpse.  Other scenes are more violent but the consequences of violence are rarely shown, making this the most morbid and haunting moment of an otherwise care-free, light-hearted extravaganza.

My Rating: 3.5 out of 5