Mutiny On The Bounty 1935

The Film:

This is a story I know pretty well (most people do, I suppose?) but I've never seen this version of it. I vaguely remember not being interested in the Marlon Brando version when it was on - probably on a Sunday afternoon - when I was much younger. (To be fair, if there weren't any children in it, people didn't sing and/or dance and there was no magic going on I wasn't really interested until I was about 12 or 13.)

It was a $2 million epic that received multiple nominations (although it only actually won one award) and was a big box office smash. And the casting of the previous two Best Actor winners is pretty impressive.

But - how far does it stand the test of time? Does it still look technically impressive at all? Does the acting stand up? Are the historical inaccuracies too obvious and distracting? Are there going to be too many culturally inappropriate natives to deal with? And will it be worth two and a quarter hours to find out......


The Ceremony:

The 8th Awards were held on March 5th 1936 at The Biltmore and were presented by Frank Capra - which was quite fitting after him cleaning up the awards the previous year.

The only new award this year was for Dance Direction - an award that only lasted for a few years, which says something about the changing emphasis in Hollywood. It was the second and last time that "write-in" nominations were allowed - and Cinematography was won via that method. It is also the only year (to date) where three of the Best Actor nominations were for the same film, and this may have been a key factor in introducing Supporting categories the following year.

Most notably, this was the first year that the awards themselves were referred to as Oscars!

One hell of a line-up at the ceremony - Frank Capra, DW Griffith, Jean Hersholt,
Henry B Walthall, Frank Lloyd, Cecil B de Mille, Donald Crisp. 

And I've found a little bit of film too:

Other Notable Winners That Night:

Bette and Victor

Despite all the nominations - including the three for Best Actor - Mutiny on the Bounty only won one award (the last time so far that this has happened!)

Best Director was the first of several for John Ford, for The Informer. Victor McLaglen won Best Actor for the same film, and Bette Davis won the first of her Best Actress awards for Dangerous.

DW Griffith, pictured with the dignitaries above, won an honorary award. His major works were completed before the Academy Awards started so this was a way of recognising how important he was to the development of motion pictures. His most famous work, Birth of a Nation, was in 1915 and is really impressive as a piece of film making (if a bit on the long side!) but now more famous for some quite nauseating racism - some horrible blackface, and the KKK riding in as the heroes! All that aside, he probably still deserved his award for "invaluable initiative and lasting contributions to the progress of the motion picture arts".


Best Song:

This is clearly now going to become a thing on this blog, so I might as well give it its own sub-heading. This year Fred and Ginger lost out twice ("Cheek to Cheek" and "Lovely To Look At") to the epic that is the Lullaby of Broadway, from Gold Diggers of 1935. The whole sequence from the film lasts about 13 minutes - this is just some of it:

What We Could/Should Have Been Watching:

He gets everywhere - and can probably
sing better than Russell Crowe!

The list is quite an impressive one again - including the sequel to a previous winner (Broadway Melody of 1936), the version of David Copperfield with WC Fields, a swashbuckling Errol Flynn (Captain Blood), and one of several versions of Les Miserables (where, thankfully, Charles Laughton doesn't have to sing Stars!). It also includes Top Hat which I love (unsurprisingly).

But I do think that the Best Film won again this time!


Our Verdict:

Seamen's rights, or the lure of Tahitian ladies?
You decide!

I wasn't expecting to do much more than just appreciate this film - big blockbusting action films are not really my thing. They have to be really good for me to like them. However, I was very pleasantly surprised! Right from the opening scenes I was hooked in and I stayed hooked for the whole film.

Considering that Cavalcade - also directed by Frank Lloyd - was only two years earlier, both the technical advances and the whole way that the story was filmed an edited were way beyond anything in that film. And I think that is what underpins the whole film. Along with great acting, impressive pacing, good use of humour, great cinematography. In short, I really liked it!

Gable sans 'tache - more than a hint
of Clooney about him?

Firstly, the story. I've never really been too fussed about this era of history, particularly the whole naval "Rule Britannia" for-King-and-country-ness of the sort of films made about it. With my Sociology hat on I'm far more interested in what happened after they got to Pitcairn (and how it all led to the sex abuse trials in 2004) than who strung who up to get there in the first place. Having said that, the story was told really well. The first ten minutes or so when they are all preparing for the voyage (and the entrance of the Captain!) is really well done - with real humour and a light touch that cleverly introduces the main characters. By the time they set sail I was ready to go with them.

From that point onwards the story kept up its pace really well. There was never too much time spent dwelling on long speeches - and even the action sequences (which were impressive - and very wet!) were short and to the point before moving on to the next bit of the story. The torture inflicted on board (the film portrays it as such) is shown unflinchingly but without gore and the mutineers are shown to be just as bloodthirsty. And I never got bored!

Suspicious cheese - thankfully, absolutely none of it on
display in the acting.

Secondly, the acting. Clark Gable was playing Clark Gable (he usually does) but I was totally convinced that he was Fletcher Christian and that he came from Cumberland, even with his unmistakably American accent. Even though the tone of the story paints Christian as too much of a hero, Gable manages to hint at a darker side by the end of the film - I could well believe that he was more interested in getting back to some Tahitian women than he was in securing justice for the crew.

Smug, superior and nasty - all in one look!

Charles Laughton (who seems to be in everything in the mid-30s!) is brilliant as Bligh. His face helps, as it does in his other famous roles, but his actual acting is also pretty impressive. He presents Bligh as a thoroughly unpleasant piece of work, but there is a little bit of pathos in there - in the scene where his fellow officers refuse to eat his tainted cheese, when he's adrift and saving his men and in the court martial where he simultaneously wins and loses. Historians have since shifted the balance of blame firmly from Bligh to Christian, but Laughton's Bligh does what he was written to do.

The third in the nominated trinity is Franchot Tone playing a fictional mashup of officers who serves as our viewpoint for the first part of the film and then as the balancing conscience (and ultimate hero) for the second half. Nice acting - and very clever writing!

Ok, so this photo is gratuitous. But so what!

The fact that the relevant parts of the film were actually shot in and around Tahiti adds something to the overall effect. And the special effects are far less "ship in a bathtub" than I was expecting. Despite a fair bit of the budget going on the stars, the rest of it was well spent.

Mutiny On The Bounty has unexpectedly summed up exactly why this Oscar Challenge is proving to be a great idea. Along with Cavalcade and Cimarron this is a film that I would never in a million years have sat down to watch otherwise - and it's by far the best of the three!



Frank Lloyd's grandson has a great Youtube channel with lots of his films on it (it's where we found Cavalcade) including this short "making of":