Captain Blood (1935)

User Rating:

7.8/10   

Director:

Michael Curtiz

Writers:

Rafael Sabatini (novel)
Casey Robinson (screenplay)

Release Date:

28 December 1935 (USA)

Genre:

Action | Adventure | Romance

Tagline:

THE MOST MAGNIFICENT & THRILLING SEA ADVENTURE EVER FILMED (original print ad - all caps)

Plot:

An enslaved English doctor and his comrades in chains escape and become pirates of the Robin Hood variety.

Plot Keywords:

Escape | Swashbuckler | Slavery | Pirate | Caribbean

Awards:

Nominated for 5 Oscars.

Cast

Errol Flynn	...	Peter Blood
Olivia de Havilland	...	Arabella Bishop
Lionel Atwill	...	Col. Bishop
Basil Rathbone	...	Levasseur
Ross Alexander	...	Jeremy Pitt
Guy Kibbee	...	Hagthorpe
Henry Stephenson	...	Lord Willoughby
Robert Barrat	...	Wolverstone
Hobart Cavanaugh	...	Dr. Bronson
Donald Meek	...	Dr. Whacker
Jessie Ralph	...	Mrs. Barlow
Forrester Harvey	...	Honesty Nuttall
Frank McGlynn Sr.	...	Rev. Ogle
Holmes Herbert	...	Capt. Gardner
David Torrence	...	Andrew Baynes

Runtime:

119 min | USA:99 min (re-release)

Country:

USA

Language:

English | French

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Argentina:Atp | Germany:12 | Australia:PG (DVD rating) | Sweden:Btl | New Zealand:PG | USA:Approved (PCA #1552) | USA:TV-G (TV rating) | Australia:G | UK:PG

Filming Locations:

Corona, California, USA

Company:

Warner Bros. Pictures

Trivia:

The Academy Awards that year allowed write-in votes. Based on write-ins alone, Michael Curtiz would have won the Oscar for best director, but on the night he lost to John Ford for his work on The Informer (1935). Composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold and writer Casey Robinson also failed to be properly nominated, though they both received large numbers of postal votes for their work.

Goofs:

Continuity: When governor Steed receives treatment from Dr. Blood, Steed holds the cane beside the armchair in the establishing shot. In the next shot the cane is between his legs.

Quotes:

Dr. Peter Blood: Men, I've just heard a startling piece of news - King James is kicked out of England and good King William reigns in his stead.
[the crew all cheer]
Dr. Peter Blood: For me this changes the shape of the world. For you who were slaves with me, it means that we're no longer slaves, that we once more have a home and a country. For you who are English it means a chance to fight for your native land... for I now propose to sail into Port Royal and take it from the French! Those of you who are not English will have to be content with fighting for Captain Blood... and the loot you'll find on the French ships. Are you willing to fight, men?
[...]

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Ninja's Force (1984)

Soundtrack:

Fugal Episode from Prometheus

Up into the shrouds, Lads!

It's Flynn's first big picture and it brings him together with Olivia DeHavilland, Michael Curtiz, and Erich Wolfgang Korngold. It's not their best movie together but it's a terrific introduction to the parts these personalities were to play in swashbucklers.

Flynn is brash and cocky. (He didn't change much until he began to physically deteriorate later in life.) He projects his emotions the way a traffic light projects directions, with utter simplicity. There's never a moment when we doubt we know what he's thinking. He looks extremely handsome too (he was 26) without being in the least effete.

Olivia De Havilland is his perfect counterpart. She was never a raving beauty, but she's extremely feminine. She has a wide face with huge eyes, a dazzling smile, and a tinkling laugh. Where Flynn is adventurous she is cautious, thoughtful, often puzzled about her loyalties, and she holds things back, while Flynn shouts things out.

The rest of the cast is filled with familiar faces from the 30s -- J. Carol Naish, Guy Kibbee, Lionel Atwill -- and they do their jobs well.

It's a sound-stage bound movie with a lot of model work, some of it clumsy but still effective. A neatly done set is a tribute to the production designer. The banana plants grow neatly in picturesque places and the papier-mache palms beat the real thing. Natural locations are often cluttered with vegetation, but these jungles and beaches are flawless. They don't look like real locations. They look like what you wish real locations looked like.

This is Erich Wolfgang Korngold's first score for a movie. (He'd previously adapted Mendelsohn for an earlier one.) It's often claimed that Hollywood composers were child prodigies but in Korngold's case it's not an exaggeration. He was studying piano and music theory at five, conducted his own cantata (for Gustav Mahler) at nine, and had his first work published at thirteen. He was a prolific composer too -- violin concertos, two operas -- by the time he was in his mid-thirties. Max Reinhardt sent him to Hollywood to write a few scores, of which this was one. It was thrown into his lap and he had to write it almost overnight. There was simply not enough time to do it all, so he stole a little from Liszt, the scene in which the Spanish pirates are looting the town. He returned to Europe to continue his career but, well, the continent by that time was no place for a guy named Korngold, genius or not. So he returned to Hollywood until after the war when he was able to go back to Europe and renew his composing.

I don't mean to take up too much space dealing with Korngold, but the fact is that Flynn's early movies would just not be the same with anyone else. Korngold wrote music the way Flynn acted -- full of dash and bombast -- and some of it was stunningly lyrical. (The simple love song in "The Sea Hawk" has a melodic progression that defies prediction.) It's hardly worth noting that the name of this talented musician has been parodied elsewhere as "Wolfgang von Korngold" by another reviewer, Howydymax, whose penetrating insights into film fare I have usually admired and sometimes stolen from. Curtiz's direction had the same slam-bang quality as the composer's. Absolutely nothing artsy about it, a straightforward story.

There are some weaknesses in the script. When I first saw it, finally, on TV, I'd been waiting for a chance for years and was frustrated because there didn't seem to be enough action. One longish scene of sailing ships pounding each other to pieces, and one fencing match between Basil Rathbone and Flynn -- too brief for my taste. Actually, at the time Flynn wasn't comfortable with swordplay and it shows. Rathbone, on the other hand, took up the sport seriously and was evidently a pretty accomplished fencer. I've seen it again recently and enjoyed it much more, a cartoon of a movie, full of intrigue, romance, and action.

Well worth watching.