BFI introduction: Captain Blood (1935)

Here's the transcript of my introduction to Captain Blood (Michael Curtiz, 1935), in the Art of Action season, which took place at the BFI Southbank in London on Wednesday 6 November:

"Hi,

I’m going to tell you a bit about the background to Captain Blood, its enduring significance and a few things to look out for while watching it.

There’s a line that the judge in the film speaks early on – “In heaven’s name, be brief, man” – and I’ve taken that to heart. I’ll talk for about nine minutes, and then I’ll let you watch the movie.

Can I just have a show of hands as to who’s seen Captain Blood before…?

It's about a third of you. Well, all of you are going to have a great time, but only about a third of you realise it yet.

Captain Blood is the film that made stars out of Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland, and, with its release in 1935, launched a swashbuckler craze that lasted for five years, before exploding again in the early ‘50s.

Swashbucklers had been a key part of silent cinema: Douglas Fairbanks turned himself from a rom-com lead to an action hero with The Mark of Zorro in 1920 – and there’s a screening of that movie, with its astonishing final reel, at the BFI on Saturday 23rd. Fairbanks then made a string of huge hits in the same mould, including his 1922 Robin Hood, and The Black Pirate. But when he retired from swordfighting with the elegiac The Iron Mask in 1929, the genre went with him.

Swashbucklers were reborn in the sound era with The Count of Monte Cristo, an independent film made in 1934, and Warner Bros – wanting to get in on the action – hired the star of that movie, Robert Donat, to play Captain Blood, in its remake of an old silent.

At that time, Warner were still best known for fast-talking urban pictures aimed at an immigrant audience:

• gangster movies
• backstage musicals
• films about social justice

But America’s tastes were changing, and Hal Wallis, the studio’s new head of production, was particularly drawn to historical epics. Captain Blood’s script was by Casey Robinson, who became the studio’s expert at adapting novels. He kept the basis of the Rafael Sabatini book – about a physician who becomes a slave and later a pirate – but looked to “humanise” the story, in his words, getting inside the central character, and introducing a theme of man’s injustice to man. And in case that wouldn’t bring in the crowds, he also built up the love story, and introduced a couple of quack doctors for comic relief.

The studio put aside a million dollars for the film – the most they had spent on a picture since the debacle of Noah’s Ark in 1928, a movie that had lost Warner $2m, as well as drowning three extras. Incredibly, they hired the same director, Michael Curtiz, who after that disaster had been relegated to making programmers. While waiting for production to begin, he directed an entry in Warner’s mediocre Perry Mason series, called The Case of the Curious Bride. And, in that film, playing the part of a corpse, later seen in flashback being murdered, while speaking no lines of dialogue, was a 25-year-old Australian bit-part actor called Errol Flynn, making his Hollywood debut. Remember his name, because he’s coming back in a minute.

In the meantime, Warner were having serious problems casting Captain Blood. Robert Donat had dropped out, and the studio’s attempts to replace him with box-office names like Leslie Howard, Fredric March or Clark Gable all failed.

Head producer Hal Wallis had taken to screen-testing everyone in sight. An acerbic memo from studio chief Jack Warner to Wallis on the 16th of April 1935 read: “I noticed that there are 24 reels of tests for Captain Blood accumulated up here in the projection room. I would suggest that instead of you going to Palm Springs for the next weekend that you stay here and run [them].”

Eight weeks later, though, they were still testing. On the 11th of June, Wallis ordered tests of the abysmal George Brent and – fatefully – one Errol Flynn, who had previously read for the part of one of Blood’s crew. Jack Warner compared Flynn’s new test to seeing “a meteor stab the sky, or a bomb explode, or a fire sweep across a dry hillside”. Wallis said Flynn “leapt from the screen into the projection room with the impact of a bullet.”

Flynn got the gig. But being thrown into a starring role in Warner’s most expensive sound-era movie wasn’t, if you’ll excuse the pun, plain sailing. We have Wallis’s memos from during production, which make this clear. On 9 September, a month into filming, he wrote to Curtiz about Flynn: “The fellow looks like he is scared to death every time he goes into a scene. I don’t know what the hell is the matter.” The good news, though: once he was into a scene, “he plays it charmingly”.

“I worked as hard as I knew how,” Flynn remembered, though he was called onto the carpet once, after becoming drunk, waving his sword about “like a Cossack”, shouting lines that weren’t in the script, and proceeding to almost fall off the boat. For once, though, he may have been blameless. The star claimed that the crew had fed him brandy after he collapsed due to a recurrence of malaria – and, astonishingly, historians believe that he may have been telling the truth.

Flynn was acting opposite the 19-year-old Olivia de Havilland, who had also signed with Warner the previous year, abandoning her original dream of becoming a schoolteacher. She first met Flynn at their costume test. Her reaction: “Oh my! Oh my! Struck dumb. I knew it was what the French call a coup de foudre.”

Love at first sight. A lightning bolt.

“He is the handsomest, most charming, most magnetic, most virile young man in the entire world,” she elaborated.

But as well as being the most virile young man in the entire world, Flynn was also married, to French actor Lili Damita. While his professional partnership with de Havilland would endure for eight movies across six years, and although they had fallen in love, their relationship would never be consummated.

Production on Captain Blood took around 11 weeks. Wallis later called Curtiz, “my favourite director, then and always”, but, during filming, his barrage of complaints, in memo form, was incessant:

• there were too many candlesticks and bowls of fruit in the foreground of shots
• there were too few people in the hold of the slave ship
• the movement of the camera to simulate a rocking boat made him dizzy
• Curtiz kept filming shirtless older pirates with hairy potbellies

The film’s composer was secured at the 11th hour: Erich Wolfgang Korngold, who had done A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the film in which de Havilland had made her debut. He wrote his extraordinary score for Captain Blood in three weeks, despite only being able to work on it at night. You’ll notice in the credits that his reads, “Musical arrangements by”, even though 98 per cent of the score is original. He’d insisted on that wording, after lifting a short extract from a piece by Liszt for the duel between Flynn and Basil Rathbone – the film’s action highlight.

Keep an eye out too, in the credits, for the name of co-cinematographer Hal Mohr: he’s a good pub-quiz answer, as the only person to ever win an Oscar without being nominated, having received a deluge of write-in votes for his work on, again, A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Captain Blood came out in Christmas week, 1935, grossing almost $3m and being nominated for five Oscars, including Picture and Score. It made stars of Flynn and de Havilland, and created a new template for swashbucklers, inspiring

• Selznick’s The Prisoner of Zenda
• countless imitations at Fox, including The Mark of Zorro
• and Warner’s own 1940 film, The Sea Hawk

After Captain Blood, Flynn and de Havilland were regularly reteamed. Reflecting decades later, she said: “Errol was a strange mixture. A great athlete of immense charm and evident physical beauty, he stood, legs apart, arms folded defiantly and crowing lustily atop the Hollywood dung heap, but he treated women like toys to be discarded without warning … He was not a kind man, but in those careless days he was fun to be with.”

Though his marriage had been one obstacle to their getting together, there were others: Flynn tended to express his affection through the medium of distressing pranks – putting a dead snake in de Havilland’s underpants during the filming of The Charge of the Light Brigade – and, certainly, the two looked at the world in different ways.

During rehearsals for Captain Blood, they had found themselves alone on a soundstage. De Havilland recalled: “He sat down and he said to me, ‘What do you want out of life?’ And so I said, ‘Well I want respect for difficult work well done.’ And then I said to him, ‘What do you want out of life?’ And he said, ‘I want success.’ And by that he meant fame and riches, and I thought, ‘That’s not enough.’”

Flynn’s fixation on material treasures is echoed in a key scene in the film, and the real-life dissipation that would prove his downfall is foreshadowed by de Havilland’s line in Captain Blood that the hero has “destroyed himself”. While she would go on to become one of the most respected and powerful actors in Hollywood, he would be dead at 50, something between a legend, a self-parody and a cautionary tale. Flynn called Captain Blood the film that “started me on that road which has so often made the public acquainted with my wicked ways”.

Viewed today – starting in about one minute’s time, in fact – Captain Blood remains rousing entertainment. Flynn is so dashing and commanding in the lead, and Curtiz’s direction is consistently striking, with that roaming camera, his vivid use of shadow, and the artful compositions that drove Wallis up the wall.

And while the film’s excessive sadism panicked supervisor Robert Lord, who worried that women and children would be warned to stay away, the movie also has three unequivocally beautiful scenes, all of which I hope have made the cut in this re-edit:

• the “sail on, little ship” sequence, which even Wallis admired
• the would-be mutiny
• and a glorious moment of romantic revelation, invented by screenwriter Casey Robinson

It has, in addition, more derring-do than you can shake a cutlass at.

So sit back and enjoy the star-making turns of Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland in… Captain Blood."

God, Shame and anti-semitism - Reviews #128

Plus: Errol Flynn gets famous, Charlize Theron gets nasty and Michael Fassbender gets naked.



Captain Blood (Michael Curtiz, 1935) - Errol Flynn became an instant star thanks to this gripping swashbuckler, which is a little light on action, but riveting entertainment regardless. He plays an Irish doctor, based in England, who is sold into slavery after tending to an injured revolutionary, only to wind up as a (chivalrous) pirate. Along the way, he spars with a French buccaneer (Basil Rathbone), a sadistic British plantation owner (Lionel Atwill), and the latter's sweet, sassy, big-eyed niece (Olivia de Havilland) - who comes in and out of his life, and not always in peace. The script is rich and flavourful - if sometimes damaged by excessive exposition - Curtiz's expressionistic direction is a treat (despite some dodgy painted backdrops) and, when the action finally arrives, it's nicely staged. Flynn may lack the innate, instinctive athleticism of his swashbuckling predecessor, Douglas Fairbanks, but he's ideally cast as the dashing, noble and never-knowingly-modest hero, and he plays the glorious pay-off to perfection. (3.5)

***



Léon Morin, prêtre (Jean-Pierre Melville, 1961) - A very talky, bracingly intelligent and deeply spiritual story about the relationship between a sexually frustrated, atheist widow (Emmanuelle Riva) and the handsome, fiercely articulate socialist priest (Jean-Pierre Belmondo) she finds whilst trying to punk the Catholic clergy. Set during and following the Occupation, the film has a few flaws, largely scenes from the source novel that are extraneous on film - Riva being stopped by a German guard, or picking up her daughter (the great child actress Patricia Gozzi) from a farm - but Belmondo is absolutely sensational, Melville directs with his usual poetic economy and the final scenes are blessed with a remarkable power. It's one of the best movies I've ever seen about our connection with the Almighty. (4)

***



*SPOILERS*
Lovers of the Arctic Circle (Julio Medem, 1998) – For 70 minutes, this is an astonishing metaphysical love story that traces, in alternate chapters, the dovetailing lives of palindromically-named Spanish stepsiblings Otto and Ana. He’s sensitive, romantic and perhaps sees her as his mother; she literally thinks he has consumed her father’s spirit. Dealing with destiny, happenstance, the circular nature of existence and the intangible nature of love, the film is profound, funny and – like its adolescent female lead – exhibits flashes of vital sexuality. Then the coincidences that play such a large part in Ana’s view of life start to pile up too heavily, reducing rather than enhancing their impact, and Otto winds up dangling rather impotentently from a tree, a metaphor for the film’s third act struggles. For all that, the film is never less than good, and there’s no way you’ll be prepared for its denouement, even if you anticipate it. As a whole, it remains a remarkable achievement, armed with a tireless but revolutionary concept of the human condition, and the surefooted grasp of aggressively non-linear narrative required to sustain it most of the way. (4)

***



*SPOILERS AND A RUDE WORD*
Young Adult (Jason Reitman, 2011) – Reitman scores again, re-teaming with Juno author Diablo Cody for this tough, funny, uncomfortable and yet incredibly entertaining movie about letting go of your past, whether it involved untold glories or having your penis horribly mangled. Charlize Theron plays Mavis Gary, an author of young adult books, a rotten core beneath her perfectly-manicured surface, who returns to her hometown of Mercury to steal her high school sweetheart from the mother of his child. Instead, she quietly implodes and then publicly explodes, before drawing somewhat selfish affirmation from a pair of uncool contemporaries. It’s cleverly conceived, perfectly-paced and very well-acted, if perhaps lacking the one classic scene that would shove it into the pantheon of the greats. Having your heroine shouting “You fucking bitch” at the mother during a baby’s naming ceremony is a decent go, though. (3.5)

***



*SPOILERS*
The Old Dark House (James Whale, 1932) – Here’s a glorious oddity from Universal’s horror cycle: a star-studded comedy – based on a JB Priestley play and set in the remote venue across one stormy night – that delivers an escalating number of shocks and chills. Melvyn Douglas gives his best early performance as a debonair, war-soiled music lover, while Charles Laughton matches him as a bluff, self-made Yorkshireman pining for his lost wife, though perhaps best of all is Ernest Thesiger, playing our terrified host. The scene in which he provides a litany of feeble excuses as to why he can’t go and fetch a lamp from the top floor is uproariously funny. The cast also includes Old Rose from Titanic, Raymond Massey, Lilian Bond, and Boris Karloff, who we're assured in a self-aggrandising written prologue is the same Karloff who played the "mechanical monster" in Frankenstein. That hulking, wordless, groaning psychopath is the same one as here? Well I never. Perhaps the film’s concessions to action could have been a little slicker, and shorter – for a film that only runs 71 minutes, a little too much time is spent unconvincingly brawling – but it’s a clever and knowing film, sending up the genre in straight-faced style, and possessing a smattering of romance, sentiment and good, old-fashioned terror, like Whale’s camera alighting on the hands of a maniac, descending the stairs to set the house on fire. (3.5)

***



*MINOR SPOILERS*
Le goût des autres (Agnès Jaoui, 2000) aka The Taste of Others – This ensemble romantic comedy, about the attraction of opposites and the vagaries of love, sees an uncultured factory owner (Jean-Pierre Bacri) fall for a tragedienne (Anne Alvaro), while his bodyguard (Gérard Lanvin), an ex-cop, begins an affair with a weed dealer (Jaoui). Written by husband-and-wife team Jaoui and Bacri, it’s engrossing, appealing and wise, with a few big laughs – most of which concern Bacri trying to learn English – a satisfying conclusion, and a laissez-faire attitude towards fidelity that’s quite exquisitely French. The always apposite music includes three pieces by the great British contralto Kathleen Ferrier. (3.5)

***



On a Clear Day (Gaby Dellal, 2005) - An unusually mature, serious-minded and consequently entertaining spin on the familiar British underdog story, done to death since the success of Brassed Off. Peter Mullan is nothing short of superb as a moody, unhappy and now unemployed working class father-of-two, who has lost one son and alienated his other, a sensitive stay-at-home dad (Jamie Sives) with whom he's can't communicate. Searching for purpose in his life, Mullan decides to swim the English Channel, but the film offers no climactic, cliched contest peppered with colourful caricatures. Instead, it gives us a story of a desperately lonely, conflicted and haunted man doing battle with himself amidst the waves. A supporting story about Mullan's wife (Brenda Blethyn) training to be a bus driver is out-of-place and uninteresting - though she does well with the character she's given - but the film only really missteps when it incorporates a couple of broad, idiotic comic scenes featuring characters with names like Mad Bob and Merv the Perv, who seem to have wandered in from a Guy Ritchie movie. When the script allows the humour to come organically from its compelling, character-driven storyline - and from a likeable supporting cast led by Billy Boyd - it's much more believable, effective and amusing. Except perhaps when everyone falls off the speedboat. I was expecting something altogether more trivial and disposable than what the film ultimately offers, thanks in no small part to Mullan's commanding and uncompromising performance. (3)

Trivia note: Training scenes were shot in the sea off Port Erin on the Isle of Man, while nearby Fleshwick Bay doubled for Dover.

***



*THIS WAY FOR HUGE SPOILERS*
Shame (Steve McQueen, 2011) – I’m sure sex used to be fun. McQueen’s follow-up to Hunger is what a Loose Women presenter thinks a man’s life is like, as Magneto (Michael Fassbender) spends every spare minute sexing up women, destroying his laptop with filth or hiding in the work toilets. McQueen makes his point about the potential disconnect between love and sex (and the difference between those things and BEING A MASSIVE WEIRDO) in a superb, wordless subway sequence near the start, then somewhat belabours the point for a further 70 minutes, before things start to get really unpleasant. Still, while the material is somewhat repetitious and some of Abi Morgan’s dialogue is typically clichéd, it’s a very well-directed movie, with the glass-fronted New York looking as cool and impersonal as any setting for a film about urban alienation should. And Fassbender is truly exceptional. People keep saying they can’t believe he wasn’t nominated for an Oscar, but I would have been surprised had he been. For one thing he’s playing a sex addict whose exploits... well, you know... there’s that guy... and then those two women he’s... with... as his sister lies dying. And for a second thing, he’s actually good. Lolz. A lot has been said in reviews about Little Michael (“Fallusbender”, if you will), but no-one seems to have mentioned yet that the star’s coital face looks like the son of Guy Pearce and Skeletor. Fans of awesomely-talented British actresses will be pleased to note that Carey Mulligan gives a good showing as Fassbender’s troubled sibling, with the pair displaying a credible and enduring chemistry, no matter what melodramatics the story throws at them. James Badge Dale is also gratifyingly annoying as the Fass’s overly pally boss. I don’t think the film is quite as good as everybody else seems to, but as a character study, a confrontational take on a largely taboo subject and a showcase for Fassbender, it’s memorable and striking enough to bother checking out. (3)

***



*MINOR SPOILERS*
Gentleman’s Agreement (Elia Kazan, 1947) – An earnest, groundbreaking but dated treatment of anti-semitism that’s saddled with numerous flaws, but just about scrapes by on the strength of its convictions, which are watertight – aside from a toxic rant about Jews “always causing trouble for everyone” that isn’t quite righted. The opening is a triumph of bad writing, as essayist Gregory Peck searches for a way into his latest assignment on the subject of anti-semitism. It takes him literally half an hour to decide to pretend to be Jewish, and the scenes in which he strikes upon his plan, and then puts it into action at an office lunch are hilariously awful. And I can say that, being a Jew myself, as Gregory would put it. His self-righteousness gets to be a little much when he lectures his Jewish secretary on her behaviour, sustaining his ruse all the while. Moss Hart’s script lacks the wit and the satirical edge of his best work; maybe he thought the subject too serious or maybe he was in awe of the task, both in terms of adapting a noted bestseller, and in its human context. Whatever, it features far too much speechifying, and flounders whilst trying to incorporate a dreary romantic subplot – featuring a disappointing turn from the mighty Dorothy McGuire – that has a point but spends far too long getting to it. There's no such justification for the woeful thread about Peck's ailing mother (Anne Revere).

The film is at its best when dealing with everyday anti-semitism. Those sequences, which should be the movie’s raison d’etre and bizarrely seem analogous to Fred and Ginger’s dance scenes or Val Lewton’s horror set-pieces, are by far the film’s finest moments. There are other effective scenes dotted about the place, though, like Peck’s son (Dean Stockwell) being taunted by the neighbourhood kids, and the aftermath, featuring Jewish soldier John Garfield, who also dominates a climactic tête-à-tête with McGuire. Perhaps the last of those works because it feels like the right place for a summation speech, or perhaps it’s because Garfield does such a good job with rather an uncertain part; by contrast, Peck is pretty weak (his good performances seemed to come without reason or warning). The best characterisation, though, arrives courtesy of Celeste Holm, who won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar. But after injecting considerable life into proceedings, even she has to spend her last scene gazing into the middle distance, pontificating about prejudice. The film remains reasonably watchable, but its childlike idealism is sadly allied to a childlike notion of storytelling. It’s not as bad as some today may have you believe, but it’s certainly not the great movie it was seen as in 1947, when its source novel was still taking the nation by storm, and the film itself scooped Best Picture. Certainly it pales in comparison with Edward Dmytryk’s punchy film noir, Crossfire, featuring Roberts Mitchum, Ryan and Young, made the same year and dealing with the same subject in a sharper, more modern and more visceral manner. (2.5)

***



More Than a Secretary (Alfred E. Green, 1936) – Jean Arthur, who runs a serious-minded secretarial school, is aghast that all her pupils want to do is find a rich boss, and marry him. But, after a misunderstanding, she lands a job with inhuman, allegedly good-looking fitness magazine editor George Brent – now all she has to do is warm him up. It’s a fun if slightly lowbrow romantic comedy, with a couple of moments of the Arthur magic, and a lively supporting cast. Ruth Donnelly is a bit underused, but Lionel Stander is quite funny as Brent's bodybuilding receptionist, and Dorothea Kent steals the show as Arthur’s scheming, big-eyed protégé – the archetypal dumb blonde so beloved of Hollywood screenwriters. Brent was never much of a dramatic actor, and he isn’t much of a comedian, though when he’s being exasperated he pulls some really camp faces. (2.5)