Release Year: 1935
Country: United States
Starring: Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, Lionel Atwill, Basil Rathbone, Ross Alexander, Guy Kibbee, Henry Stephenson, Robert Barrat, Hobart Cavanaugh, Donald Meek.
Writer: Casey Robinson
Director: Michael Curtiz
Cinematographer: Ernest Haller and Hal Mohr
Music: Erich Korngold
Producer: Harry Joe Brown and Gordon Hollingshead
Availability: Buy it from Amazon
Promote It: Digg | del.icio.us

Although I didn't make an official announcement, as of Night Creatures I am doing my third "Netxflix Diaries" experiment, meaning that I am reviewing everything (except television shows) that comes to me via Netflix. I've done it a couple times before, and I always enjoy it because, while it is exhausting to accelerate my pace to keep up with my five-at-a-time rental plan (actually six, but one of those is for the girlfriend, and there is no way I'm reviewing Mo'nique films), I enjoy the fact that it actually forces me to watch the movies I rent, and it forces me to review outside my comfort zone. This can result in some embarrassment, as I clumsily struggle to review films of the French New Wave or get get caught with something like Embrace the Darkness II in my queue (sorry -- I just really have a thing for Catalina Larranaga). But I like these challenges, feeble though they may be when compared to the labors of Hercules or the dashin' Prince Hasan. It helps foster an air of diversity here, rather than letting me slink along reviewing nothing but movies featuring guys in skull masks. Not that this round has thus far produced much that is far outside Teleport City's usual sphere of influence -- a Hammer film, a German krimi, a silly Arabian adventure film that no one in the world likes but me. And nothing in the immediate future is going to be terribly surprising -- a bunch of historical epics, some science fiction (actually, I noticed that I rarely review sci-fi, even though I watch a lot of it), and a slew of Poverty Row mystery films, among other things. But within each of these are things I wouldn't normally review.

For instance, I probably never would have reviewed Captain Blood, even though I think it's a fantastic film. But here we are, and this allows me to expound -- because you know I love not getting around to the actual review until like the final three paragraphs -- on something I know I mentioned once before but can't remember exactly where. Teleport City is, by and large, a cult film site. It would seem, upon first impression, that a film like Captain Blood, or many of the old films that I regularly watch, would be ill at home here. After all, they are classics. Does anyone need one more person telling you Captain Blood is great? Or that any of these old films are great? I mean, everyone already knows that, right? It's common knowledge, and everyone has seen these films a thousand times. Well, while that may have been true at some point, it hardly holds up well today. In fact, even many of the best-known films of the 50s and earlier have, in today's pop cinema landscape, been so completely forgotten that they have achieved a level of obscurity that rivals that of any of the other cult films we might be prone to discussing. This they accomplish despite being widely available, widely discussed in the past, and cherished by the handful of people who still bother with old black and white films.


But for many people, and through no real fault of their own (it's hard to seek out and watch something if no one tells you it exists), these films might as well be as mysterious and esoteric as a Filipino superhero film in which a woman in a silver space bikini fights a vampire. The sources to which these people (and by "these people," I mean those who are roughly my age or younger) -- often do not mention old films, and so they become forgotten relics despite their merits and the best efforts of Turner Classic Movies (also known as the cable channel most in need of going HD). Additionally, older films have the reputation of being crude and overly talky, full of antiquated melodrama, weird acting styles, crummy special effects, and endless scenes of well-dressed people sitting around in living rooms doing nothing at all. Where this impression of older films come from, I am not entirely certain, because anyone who takes the time to dig a little deeper into cinema's past has discovered that action, adventure, and intrigue were staples of the film industry of the 30s and 40s just as much as they are today, and in many cases, the action, adventure, and stuntwork on display in black and whites from bygone eras surpasses anything that is done today, hamstrung as we are by an over-reliance on CGI and insurance-related litigation.

I am confident that the type of people who seek out the movies regularly discussed on Teleport City are the same people who are open to (if not already actively engaged in) exploring older films and understanding that most of the conceptions people have about them are wrong. And so, a film like Captain Blood, or Gunga Din, or any of the old noir and Poverty Row thrillers we'll be getting to in due time, actually fit in at Teleport City every bit as well as the films of Jess Franco or Antonio Margheriti. Turning up amazing and forgotten films doesn't always require you to travel to Manila and spend a month digging through the crates out back of a grimy video rental store. Sometimes, all you have to do is skip the "Midnight Movies" section of wherever you go to rent or purchase films, and walk (or click) over to the "Classics" section.


Which brings us, with a shorter digression than usual, to Captain Blood. I watched a lot of black and white adventure films when I was a kid. There was no cable television where I lived, and there were no VCRs, so you were left with whatever they played on regular television (which, back then, went off the air around one in the morning and wasn't filled with nothing but Everybody Loves Raymond reruns), and that often meant watching black and white films, most likely because the rights to them could be had for cheap, and they were likely to be acceptable for television broadcast without the need for much editing. So I developed a taste for them, because really, that's all we had save for the Godzilla films on the weekend. However, through some cruel twist of fate, I never saw any old pirate movies. I saw plenty of other types of adventure films, and I'm pretty sure I saw Mutiny on the Bounty and Moby Dick at least once a week, but if I saw any of the old swashbuckling pirate films, I don't remember them -- and given my bizarre propensity for remembering weird things like that, it seems unlikely that I would have sat through an Errol Flynn pirate movie and not remembered it.

Ahhh, Errol Flynn. Allow me, if you will, to indulge for a moment one of my gentlemanly crushes -- or admiration, if flirtations with homosexuality make you uncomfortable for some reason (and if they do, you need to grow a little more backbone). I have never shied away from such things and see no reason to do so. My taste in men falls primarily along the traditional lines of masculinity as defined in the 30s and 40s my matinee idols like Errol Flynn and Clarke Gable. Bogart and Mitchum. Cary Grant, of course. And wiry little Fred Astaire for his amazing power to look amazing in clothes no man should be able to pull off. Even with today's leading men -- a talent pool largely devoid of any real charisma or air of rugged masculinity -- I gravitate toward the few men who radiate that old-school air (which smells of mentholated shaving cream and woody musk): Clooney, Denzel, drunken Russell Crowe, and lately Josh Brolin. And this guy at the climbing wall at my gym.

But few and far between are the lads who cut such a shape as the men of the 30s and 40s. They knew how to dress, they knew how to throw a punch, they knew how to drink, and they knew how to handle the ladies except for Bette Davis, who no one could handle nor should much want to. Of these men, I was early on familiar with the films of Bogart and Gable, Grant and of course Mitchum -- who was and remains still my Grandpa Harley's favorite actor and role model in life (photos of my grandfather as a young man are striking in their likeness). But while I knew Flynn by name, I knew practically nothing about his films and had never seen one until much later in my life. Ah well, so much the better. It's always nice to know something is waiting just over the horizon, yet to be discovered. Since then, I've worked hard to improve my familiarity with Flynn, his tumultuous life, and his films. And now you, dear reader, get to be the recipient of my hard-earned knowledge, so long as "hard-earned" means "I read a book."


Flynn's career as a leading man began with Captain Blood. Before this movie, he had a couple small roles but had done very little that would make people sit up and take notice. 1935 was a big year for filmmaking, and a number of my favorite big-budget (for the time) adventure films come from that year -- Mutiny on the Bounty starring Clarke Gable, Howard Hawks' Barbary Coast, and Cecil B. DeMille's The Crusades, among other films. Additionally, 1935 saw the release of The Lives of a Bengal Lancer, which I have not seen but am keen to do so, as it stars Gary Cooper and deals with one of my sundry pet obsessions -- that being the portrayal in Western cinema of Raj-era India (and from a time when India was still a British colony). Somewhere amid that parade of bright lights and star power, Warner Brothers decided to release a pirate film by a director no one knew and starring two leads no one had ever heard of. Pirate movies were difficult enough as it was. During the silent era, Douglas Fairbanks was able to buckle his swashes all over the place, but with the introduction of sound, production of seafaring fare became problematic, as the technology and technique was not yet sufficiently advanced to deal with all the creaking, cracking, and crashing that comes with filming on a ship and on the ocean.

This resulted in swashbucklers that were less about the swashing of buckles (or is the buckling of swashes) and more about guys sitting around inside their cabin -- which could be conveniently created on a studio sound stage. Captain Blood, as Warner's film was to be called, was to be an attempt to return to the more action-oriented style of Fairbanks, troubles with sound recording on the high seas be damned. But there were other problems facing the production. The first actor to whom Warner offered the role of Captain Blood turned it down, as did the second. That left them flailing, somewhat, until finally they settled on taking a chance on one of their bit players, a Tasmanian by the name of Errol Flynn. Playing opposite him as the lead female was another newcomer, Olivia de Havilland. Unknown starlets were one thing and hardly uncommon. They could easily be made into overnight sensations by pairing them with an established leading man. But now, Captain Blood was saddled with two newcomers, and on top of that, it was being directed by Michael Curtiz, a man whose experience lay almost entirely in the early, silent days of filmmaking and who was hardly a name to contend with spectacle-makers like Howard Hawks and Cecil B. DeMille. I'm not sure what Warner Brothers' expectations for the film's performance were at the time, but it'd be hard to argue that it was anything but an underdog and that Warner was taking a gamble when they bet their million dollars on this unproven cast.


Captain Blood tells the story of righteous Dr. Peter Blood (Flynn), who finds himself on the wrong end of King James' temper during the 1685 rebellion of the Duke of Monmouth. Monmouth was previously known as James Scott and more previously still as James Croft, the illegitimate son of King Charles II. The Duke of Monmouth was a title created specifically for him, presumably to keep him out of the hair of other contenders for the throne. It didn't work. When Charles died and James II, Monmouth's uncle, was crowned King of England, Monmouth -- who had a long and distinguished military career -- felt severely slighted. He had himself crowned king in exile (he was, at the time, living in the Dutch provinces), and in 1685 launched a revolt meant to bring down James II and the Catholic-influenced reign. The rebellion, like many rebellions, started off strong, but when people started dying, the rebellion went the way of so many others. People deserted Monmouth en masse, and before too long, his rebellion was crushed at the battle of Sedgemoore.

Monmouth himself was captured, tried, and executed. It is during this battle that our hero Peter Blood -- himself no fan of James II but also of the opinion that the Duke of Monmouth was going to be just as rotten -- is asked to save the life of a wounded man. Blood, having no committed political leaning, relies instead on his sacred oath as a doctor, which compels him to help those he can. When King James' men bust in and find him, they aren't as keen on the Hippocratic Oath as Blood, and he soon finds himself in prison and on trial for treason. Brought before a judge whose only interest is in sending men to the gallows, the future looks bleak for the well-meaning and eloquent doctor, until King James is convinced that, aside from being hugely unpopular with the people, his gory orgy of retribution and hanging is a waste of manpower that would be better used as slaves in the colonies of the New World. So it is that Blood finds himself spared from the noose but shipped off toward a fate often considered far worse. Incidentally, my own ancestors from Scotland followed pretty close behind him, getting themselves in a spot of trouble in 1689 and finding themselves shipped off to some place called America -- or so the family legend goes. Family legend also includes my grandfather beheading Adolf Hitler, so read into that what you will.

In Jamaica, Blood continues to be uppity and proud and smart, a trait that immediately rubs local plantation Colonel Bishop (Lionel Atwill) the wrong way. However, Bishop's niece Arabella (de Havilland) takes a liking to Blood and purchases him for ten pounds, only to discover that he is hardly thankful to her, as slavery is still slavery. Blood finds himself in considerably better standing than his fellow slaves when his skills as a doctor are put to use healing the governor, who suffers from a painful bout o' gout. Still as he is a man of honor and a natural-born leader, he does everything he can to protect his boys and irritate Bishop, who is infuriated that Blood's role as doctor to the governor allows hims to get away with so much. Blood eventually hatches an escape plan, though he runs into a snag when a Spanish warship attacks the city. In the ensuing chaos, Blood leads the slaves first to freedom, then across the bay, where they board the Spanish warship while its proper owners are busy looting the town. Possessed now of their freedom and a fine ship, but not a home, Blood drafts a series of Buccaneers' Articles, and so begins their lives as pirates.


Watching Flynn in this role, it's hard to believe this is his first time as a leading man. He handles the role with astounding proficiency. It is impossibly not to cheer for Captain Blood, and the script provides Flynn ample opportunity to deliver stirring speeches about freedom and tyranny, punctuated by scenes of guys firing muskets and cannons and swinging from the rigging of giant sailing ships. Flynn handles his stirring speeches with the same aplomb as he does the action scenes. He is the very definition of roguish charm, and he is assisted by a series of perfect foils, which include the thoroughly loathsome Colonel Bishop and the shifty French pirate Levasseur (played brilliantly by Basil Rathbone). Although it happened somewhat by chance, it seems that, in the end, Captain Blood was constructed purely to turn Errol Flynn into the dashing, swashbuckling heartthrob he became. Recognizing the chance that has fallen into his lap, Flynn does not disappoint.

Although Flynn is the center of attention, Olivia de Havilland fares well to, The script by Casey Robinson grants her a stronger character than was usual for the time, while still keeping her as a believable member of the female sex during the late 1600s -- as opposed to modern tendencies to create strong women by flying in the face of history and filling themselves with scantily-clad, often skinny warrior-women who are, for some reason, all proficient at Chinese style swordplay and martial arts. Arabelle may not take part in the swashbuckling, but when it comes to nerve and intelligence, she is nearly the match of Blood and very much the superior of Colonel Bishop. She had Flynn strike up an easy chemistry that makes the romantic portion of the film believable. There's no question why a woman would fall in love with Blood, and there's very little mystery behind Blood's attraction to Arabella. The two young stars were paired in subsequent films, and rumors persisted that the two of them were romantically involved off-screen as well, though de Havilland has always denied this, citing Flynn's status as a married man -- which is sort of a novel defense, knowing what we know about Flynn and his voracious appetite for drinking and womanizing.

These appetites would plague him throughout his life, culminating in a statutory rape charge he was eventually found not guilty of -- though even a Flynn fan like me has to question the accuracy of the outcome given that, later in his life, Flynn was courting a fifteen-year-old. But for the most part, Flynn's off-screen dalliances and poor judgment did little to tarnish his popularity or his image as a noble hero. More damaging to his career was his failure to enlist in World War II (can you imagine a current leading man's career being damaged on account of his failure to enlist?) while still playing war heroes on-screen. In fact, Flynn had enlisted -- several times, and to every branch of the armed forces. Each time he was rejected on account of a series of health issues that included a weak heart (he suffered several heart attacks throughout his life), a bout with tuberculosis and malaria, and a permanently injured back. The film studio was unwilling to publicize Flynn's reason for not serving, as they felt that it was better to keep a tight lid on the star's growing health concerns. Thus, Flynn was left behind to make films like Objective Burma while the war was won by guys like Jimmy Stewart.


As I siad, the two newcomers are anchored by a solid supporting cast headed up by Basil Rathbone and Lionel Atwill. Both make for memorable villains, though Atwill's merely rotten Bishop is left in the wake of Rathbone's lamboyant French pirate. Although he's only on-screen briefly, there's no forgetting him. At the time, Rathbone was on the cusp of super-stardom. Having already eked out a comfortable career for himself as a supporting player, Rathbone would rocket to fame when he took on the role of Sherlock Holmes. Both Rathbone and Atwill are fondly remembered by horror fans for their work in that genre as well. Both of them play wonderfully off the fresh-faced and enthusiastic Flynn, and the duel between Rathbone and Flynn is one of the all-time greats.

Whatever his personal demons may have been, Captain Blood turned Flynn into a superstar, and the role defined the type of role he would play for most of his career just as it defined the swashbuckling hero. Flynn went on to star in more pirate films, including the wonderful Sea Hawk, as well as series of adventure films that includes The Adventures of Robin Hood, The Charge of the Light Brigade, Objective Burma, They Died With Their Boots On, and The Dawn Patrol, alongside his real-life friend David Niven. Other actors were quick to work within the persona created by Flynn, including Tyrone Power, who sometimes did it almost as well as Flynn. But almost means that, to this day, Flynn remains the very last word in swashbuckling heroes.

Director Micahel Curtiz fared much worse after this film. Although he went on to direct a number of the above-mentioned Errol Flynn swashbucklers, his career was all but killed when he took yet another huge gamble -- this time casting an actor known almost entirely for playing b-grade heavies in crime films as a romantic lead. That actor was Humphrey Bogart, and the movie, which was released under the title Casablanca, is all but forgotten these days. In reality, of course, Curtiz did all right. He even made a habit of giving unproven actors a big break. Flynn, and then Bogart as a romantic lead. Later in his career, Curtiz was one of the few directors who was willing to give Elvis Presley a real role, that being King Creole, which is generally regarded by many as Elvis' one truly great film and performance. Curtiz, having cut his teeth in silent era market of Europe, brings many of the sensibilities of those films into Captain Blood (and many subsequent films). Chief among these is his use of shadows and lighting, which is used to great effect many times throughout the film. Curtiz also solves the problem of shooting on location and around the ocean with a clever use of sets, location shooting, and convincing use of miniatures. Ship decks and cabins are sets, put into context with shots of actual ships on the ocean. The battles are staged in a similar fashion, and the sword fight between Blood and Levasseur is yet another combination of set and location.


Curtiz solution for the sound while shooting on a beach or aboard a ship is simple: he doesn't use sound. Blood and Levasseur's duel is shot without sound and on an actual beach, relying instead on the music by Erich Korngold to do the talking. When there is dialog, Curtiz switches to a series of convincing sets. He handles ship settings in the same way, restricting dialog to scenes that can be created on a set while scenes of actual ships are accompanied by Korngold's orchestration and the foley artist's ample cannon shots. The battles -- and there are several good ones -- also rely on miniature work mixed with actual ships, and are achieved with a remarkable degree of effectiveness. The final battle, in particular, in which Blood and his men take on a duo of French warships, is particularly exciting and well executed. There are several shots where I have no idea whether or not they're using miniatures or actual ships.

I doubt anyone guessed Captain Blood would become the perfect storm of stars, director, music, and spirit that it did, but that's usually how it happens. As far as swashbucklers and pirate movies go, you'd be hard pressed to find one better, and if you did, it would probably also star Errol Flynn. As far as my opinion goes, I hardly have much more to add. Although I was late in coming to this ad other Flynn films, I consider it one of the absolute best adventure films ever made, crammed to bursting with strong characters, great ship-to-ship battles, sword fights, and romance. The film proved to be a tremendous hit, nabbing an Oscar nominations for best picture (The Lives of a Bengal Lancer was also nominated, but all fell before the might of The Mutiny on the Bounty) as well as sound direction. In addition, in 1935 you were still allowed to cast write-in votes, and as a result, Michael Curtiz found himself nominated for best directing honors, Casey Robinson for best screenplay, and Erich Korngold for his score. In a field that was very thick, this film full of and by unknowns didn't do too bad.

Labels: Action: Adventure, Netflix Diary, Pirates, Stars: Errol Flynn, Year: 1935