Mr. Christian!
Mutiny on the Bounty (1935) – A brutal ship’s captain spurs his first mate into mutiny. Based on a best-selling novel of the historic events.
Directed by Frank Lloyd
Starring – Charles Laughton, Clark Gable, Franchot Tone
Why I Liked It – A reminder of how great the older movie can be. Epic scenery and brilliant acting.
This is a great movie. I went round and round on how to begin this review, and couldn’t find a clever place to start. So let’s begin with the simplest approach. A brilliant, big-budget movie from the Golden Age of Hollywood. It’s a big story told in a big style with big stars. It was the most expensive movie ever made at MGM at the time. The script is based on the novel of the same name by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall. “Mutiny on the Bounty” has all the pieces you could want and moves them to perfection. Laughton and Gable play perfectly here (see my note on historicity below), as the despot versus the man of honor. There are some nice smaller performances, but this movie is about Bligh and Christian. The two stars easily carry the load. Director Lloyd is one of the battalion of lesser known but technically astute directors who never gets in the way of their story.
I don’t know why I’m surprised by the technical quality of older movies. My theory is that modern video standards have brainwashed me. There’s a huge visual difference between a video recorded at 360p and 1080p. So part of my brain expects that the older film quality will be less than modern. For the majority of the movies from that age, it’s not true. The sharpness and depth of field in a movie like Charlie Chaplin’s “The Kid” or Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis” is stunning. You get movie visual standards of the highest level here.
I want to note this about learning history from the movies. Don’t. At best, popular “historical” movies should always come with the clarification that they are “based on” or “inspired by” actual events. Because outside of documentaries, movie makers fiddle with the history to make a better story. I have no complaint about that, but too many people leave these movies thinking they “know” the history now. The worst example is 2012’s “Argo” which tells the story of the rescue of six American hostages in Iran. It’s a great adventure and awful history. Canadians, who get little to no credit in the movie actually did most of the heroics in rescuing the Americans. Fun movie, dreadful history.
Here, parts of the story of the Bounty are accurate while others are total fiction. Captain Bligh has become a watchword for despotic sadism. He’s shown here flogging his crew from the beginning. In fact, William Bligh didn’t believe in flogging as a general practice and mocked captains who used it regularly. That changed after the stop in Tahiti, but he had other issues with the crew of the Bounty. It also shows the captain at the court martial for the mutineers who made it back to England. He was on another ship, headed back to Tahiti in real life. On the other hand, the movie shows the crew falling in love with the relaxed life on the island versus the strict discipline on a Royal Navy ship, the fact that only a portion of the crew approved of the mutiny, and that some of the loyal sailors were forced to stay onboard the Bounty because there was not enough room for them on the boat with Bligh. Fletcher Christian is not the clean cut hero that Gable portrays here. He resorted to several shady acts after the mutiny, including kidnapping. Bligh’s voyage in the small boat to safety was one of the greatest pieces of solo navigation ever. The mutiny on HMS Bounty is a complicated and, for most of the main characters, a sad story. Enjoy the great performances here, then go read up on the true story of William Bligh, Fletcher Christian, and the crew of the Bounty.
The movie rolls along with brilliant performances by the stars. It’s everything you could want from a movie. But don’t learn your history from it!
Rating – ***** Highest Recommendation
Stories Are My Life 
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