Mutiny on the Bounty Mutiny on the Bounty Warner 1935 / B&W / 1:37 flat full frame / 132 min. / Street Date February 3, 2003 / 19.98 Starring Charles Laughton, Clark Gable, Franchot Tone, Herbert Mundin, Eddie Quillan, Dudley Digges, Donald Crisp Cinematography Arthur Edeson Art Direction Cedric Gibbons, Arnold Gillespie Film Editor Margaret Booth Original Music Herbert Stothart, Walter Jurmann, Bronislau Kaper Written by Talbot Jennings, Jules Furthman, Carey Wilson from the novel by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall Produced by Albert Lewin, Irving Thalberg Directed by Frank Lloyd
	Reviewed by Glenn Erickson MGM's proudest spectacle of the 1930s can't top its extravagant silent epic Ben-Hur but does represent an impressive scale, with an entire ship constructed for the show and a long shooting schedule, some of it at sea. An intelligent script combines humor and drama well and almost overcomes the tale's pro-empire politics. Laughton is superb as the contemptable Bligh and Gable cements his serious acting reputation; he'd hit a home run in a comedy, It Happened One Night the year before. After this critical and boxoffice success, Metro must have felt it could do no wrong. Synopsis: Lt. Fletcher Christian (Clark Gable) press-gangs a crew from the bars of Portsmouth and takes his position under Captain William Bligh (Charles Laughton) of the Bounty, bound for Tahiti to bring back breadfruit to feed the slaves of the West Indies. Bligh so mistreats his crew that Christian's disposition toward the ship and the navy changes. When the ship reaches Tahiti, further complications spur the charismatic Christian to lead a mutiny against the tyrannical Bligh. Frank Lloyd's 1935 version of Mutiny on the Bounty is still the most popular, with the Brando-Howard and Gibson-Hopkins versions running a distant second and third. The remakes should have an edge on realism with their extensive location shooting, but the Gable-Laughton pairing still carries the most powerful dramatic charge. The old Hollywood always seemed to favor England, as both this seagoing staple and various versions of Down to the Sea in Ships soft-peddle the story of the inhuman conditions for English seamen before the reforms of the late 1700s. MGM in the 1930s had a strong anti-union bias, making Mutiny on the Bounty a tough subject to tackle with its sympathetic mutineers and outlaw hero. Bligh has to be a dastardly villain for the film to work - he claims to be enforcing discipline and authority, but is a sadist and a cheat, punishing his men for missing foodstuffs that he himself has robbed to fatten his retirement. Laughton doesn't soften the character and allows Bligh to have few redeeming qualities. According to naval history, his navigation of a lone whaleboat to safety across hundreds of miles of ocean earned him the respect of all for his seamanship under impossible conditions. Gable is equally excellent as the dashing officer turned renegade Fletcher Christian. Christian turns his back on England and revolts against intolerable injustice, and suffers a sorry fate, hiding as an outcast with his mutinous crew on the 'lost' island of Pitcairn. MGM's version is as sympathetic as it can be to Christian but still pegs his actions as tragically wrong, and perhaps motivated by a selfish desire to return to the paradise of Tahiti. A text disclaimer at the beginning of the show lets us know that conditions in the English navy changed, and the later reels imply that this incident was directly responsible. The Brits make amends, pardoning Midshipman Roger Byam (Franchot Tone) while snubbing Bligh socially. We're supposed to overlook the fact that the mercy shown aristocrat Byam didn't extend to the rest of the 'loyals' of the Bounty, who were hanged. Some petty reforms were instituted, so now all's well, the movie seem to say. Maybe the next boat out successfully imported breadfruit trees to the West Indies, relieving the colonials of the bother of feeding their slaves. The DVD contains a short subject released at the time of the feature that celebrates Bligh's navigational feat and shows what remains on Pitcairn today (well, in 1935). The great-great grandchildren of the mutineers were old people by then, eking out a living on the island. Like many 'docus' of the time, the short is filled with suspicious preaching and possibly phony reportage. The most offensive idea in its agenda is that the mutineers lived under a curse and that sinful-sounding 'inbreeding' resulted in extinction for most of them. Modern research (lately in a new book on the subject) confirms what should be obvious - Bligh's pilferage of provisions and abuse of ordinary seamen was the norm in the Navy, and the main conflict between Bligh and Christian may have been about a debt. Confined and isolated on Pitcairn, the mutineers fought and murdered each other, greatly reducing their number in just a few years. Taken as a seagoing adventure, Mutiny on the Bounty has few peers, among them Billy Budd and this year's excellent Master and Commander. Bligh's punishments and tortures retain their impact; he has a dead man flogged and murders another with a keel-hauling. The Polynesian beauties wooed by Gable and Franchot Tone are lovely, and some shots flirt with nudity. The high-spirited Tone is good company for the brooding Gable. MGM imported British comic Herbert Mundin to be the ship steward; he continued doing similar schtick in several Tarzan movies. A robust Donald Crisp is a stalwart seaman here, several years before he started portraying older men in John Ford movies like How Green Was My Valley and The Long Gray Line. MGM threw all of its resources into the depiction of the sea voyage. Some harbor and deck scenes were filmed on Catalina and at sea. The film stock has the older, early-30s quality but the opticals and rear-projection are expertly done. As can be expected, the natives range from Latins to ordinary Anglos and the leading ladies wear glamour makeup, but other details seem authentic - a Tahitian song sounds very much like the Polynesian (Melanesian?) choirs heard in The Thin Red Line. Warners' DVD of Mutiny on the Bounty is one of a pack of best-picture Oscar winners coming out simultaneously. The quality of the picture is high, but it's not going to impress as much as some other Warner releases lately. Bounty was an enormously popular film and reprintings and reissues doubtlessly wore out most of the good printing elements. The MGM vault system took comparatively good care of the materials, but duping stock in the 30s weren't all that good. The result is that the the film is clean and intact, but not as sharp as we'd like. It also has a lot of grain, depending on the scene. Most of it looks film based, perhaps aggravated a bit by the encoding. Please don't get me wrong, the film plays extremely well, but you won't be overly impressed by the visual texture of the B&W image ... it's no Sunset Blvd. In addition to the short subject about Pitcairn, there's an awards newsreel and two trailers, an original for this version and a loud, music-driven endless one for the '62 remake that was one of the low points of Marlon Brando's career. The disc has subs in English, French and Spanish, and an alternate French track. On a scale of Excellent, Good, Fair, and Poor, Mutiny on the Bounty rates: Movie: Excellent Video: Good - Sound: Good Supplements: Pitcairn Island Today (1935 short subject), newsreel, trailers Packaging: Snapper case Reviewed: January 19, 2004 [Savant Main Page] [Savant Links] [Article Index] [Review Index] [Savant 5 Year Report] DVD Savant Text © Copyright 2007 Glenn Erickson Advertise With Us Review Staff | About DVD Talk | Newsletter Subscribe | Join DVD Talk Forum Copyright © DVDTalk.com All rights reserved | Privacy Policy | Terms of Use