The Best Picture Countdown #8: Mutiny on the Bounty (1935)

Director: Frank Lloyd
Starring: Clark Gable, Charles Laughton, Franchot Tone

Mutiny on the Bounty is a great swashbuckling adventure made all the more compelling because it is based on historical fact. Frank Lloyd’s 1935 version was not the first and certainly not the last, but it’s probably the best and most fondly remembered. Starring Clark Gable and the great Charles Laughton, this story is not just a battle of wills, but a story of class, duty, and morality.

Gable stars as Fletcher Christian and Laughton as William Bligh, captain of the Bounty, whose methods make many enemies amongst the members of the crew. Bligh is cruel and sometimes unreasonable – in an early scene he orders the whipping of a sailor and then insists that the order be carried out even after learning that the sailor is dead – but the screenplay (written by Talbot Jennings, Jules Furthman, and Carey Wilson) does something important that helps inform the way we see the character and gives Laughton the foundation to make him more than simply a cardboard villain. Class is a big issue with Bligh, who worked his way up to his position the hard way. When Fletcher joins the crew of the Bounty, Bligh expresses his appreciation for having a gentleman sailor aboard and they have a short conversation in which it becomes clear that Fletcher respects the captain’s authority, but doesn’t respect the captain himself, that he seems himself as socially better. There is a similar tenor to a scene at the end between Bligh and one of the judges at the mutineers’ trial. Bligh is respected for his professional accomplishments but he will never be accepted into the highest circle; he will never be one of them and so his cruelty can be seen, in a way, as a means of overcompensating for the fact that his authority on the ship is continuously undercut by the class hierarchies that inform life off the ship.

But that is not to excuse his actions or his often barbaric treatment of his crew. Eventually it becomes too much for Fletcher who joins the disgruntled members of the crew and leads them in a mutiny that results in Bligh and his supporters being set adrift on a longboat. The Midshipman Roger Byam (Franchot Tone) remains loyal to Bligh but is told there is no room on the boat and he, along with a few others, basically become hostages to Fletcher and the other mutineers. The Bounty returns to Tahiti and those aboard spend several years living there, during which time the friendship between Fletcher and Roger is repaired. Meanwhile, Bligh miraculously guides his crew to safety against all possible odds and back in England is put in charge of another ship, one he uses to return to Tahiti and hunt Fletcher down.

The story is constructed so that it has several peaks of high action connected by long valleys of quieter character development and interaction. This works well for the most part, though the sections detailing the idyllic island life as the Englishmen “go native” go on a bit longer than they really have to and of course open the door to some questionable noble savage style imagery. Though the film is based generally in historical events, it is not necessarily historically accurate. The ending, in which Fletcher and the other mutineers, along with their Tahitian families, set out to make a life for themselves on the Pitcairn islands, is underscored with a note of optimism even though the reality was much darker. In reality, the native Tahitians who joined the mutineers were essentially kidnapped and, once on Pitcairn, turned into slaves which eventually resulted in rebellion and the deaths of just about everyone who came to settle the island (including Fletcher Christian himself).

For their roles in the film Gable, Laughton and Tone all received nominations as Best Actor (the Supporting categories were not introduced until the following year), but Laughton’s is the only performance that truly stands out. Gable seems rather restrained here in a way that he’s not in his best performances (such as the previous year’s It Happened One Night, for which he won, or Gone with the Wind) and it’s somewhat jarring to hear Fletcher telling Roger about his upbringing in Cumberland when Gable speaks in his usual American Midwest accent (this might have been slightly less noticeable were it not for the fact that everyone else in the movie speaks with various kinds of English accents). All things told, I actually found the film more compelling when it focused on Bligh rather than during the segments dealing with Fletcher and the mutineers. Bligh is presented as a more complex character than I was expecting and though he’s certainly no hero, I don’t think that Fletcher is exactly presented as the hero either. Mutiny on the Bounty has a few minor flaws, but overall it’s a film that has held up pretty well thanks largely to the soundness of its construction and its multifaceted portrayal of Bligh.

Ebert's Greats #1: The Night of the Hunter (1955)

* * * *
Director: Charles Laughton
Starring: Robert Mitchum, Lillian Gish

I've long been a fan of Roger Ebert's Great Films list and since there are a ton of films on that list that I haven't seen yet, I've decided to take it on as an ongoing personal project and work my way through, sort of like a directed viewing guide. There are a number of films from the list that I have seen and, in fact, already reviewed but that still leaves a couple hundred films for me to experience and/or write about for the first time. I'll be starting with The Night of the Hunter, Charles Laughton's moody, atmospheric and altogether excellent thriller.

On the face of it, the story of The Night of the Hunter is pretty simple. It involves two children - John (Billy Chapin) and Pearl (Sally Jane Bruce) - who know the location of $10k that their father stole and hid before being apprehended by the police and hanged for the crime. Their father's former cellmate, "Reverend" Harry Powell (Robert Mitchum), shows up, sweet talks their newly widowed mother (Shelley Winters) into marriage, murders her, and then terrorizes the children as he tries to get at the money. The kids eventually find refuge with Rachel Cooper (Lillian Gish), a force of good just as powerful as the evil represented by the relentless Powell.

The story is told in very simple and direct terms. The children are innocents, blank slates who live moment to moment, for whom events (with one notable exception) have no permanent meaning. Shortly after their father dies, John and Pearl are subjected to taunting by other children. When Pearl begins to repeat the chant, John tells her not to - not because it's disrespectful to the memory of their father but because she's "not old enough." Later when Pearl asks if he thinks their mother is dead, John simply says that yes, he believes she is. They see the world in black and white and the film itself seems to see things that way as well, unfolding in a dreamy, fairytale way with little ambiguity in terms of "good" and "evil."

If the world of children is one of innocence, the world of adults is one of corruption. The adult world is one of vice, hypocrisy, greed and violence - with the exception of Rachel. Powell famously has the words "love" and "hate" tattooed on his hands and delivers a speech in which he explains the history of the battle between the two, a speech which ultimately foreshadows his scenes with Rachel towards the end of the film. Two of the best things about this film are the characters of Powell and Rachel (especially as they are played by Mitchum and Gish). Powell is a memorable and truly terrifying villain, but Rachel is just as powerful, a strong, principled woman who refuses to back down and be intimidated. There isn't a lot of "action" in their confrontation, but it's epic because they're such distinctly and intensely drawn characters.

The Night of the Hunter was the only film that Charles Laughton would direct, a real shame since he proves to be an incredibly effective presence behind the camera. The story is told in an efficient way that keeps the tension at an incredible high from beginning to end (the score by Walter Schumann and cinematography by Stanley Cortez certainly help) and the acting is strong throughout (Mitchum gets some credit for that since Laughton's dislike of children made it necessary for Mitchum to take the reigns in many of the scenes involving Chapin and Bruce). Laughton is a strong visual stylist and throughout the film he composes some really great shots - it makes you wonder what else he would have done had this film been better received by critics and audiences when it was released. But history has been the true judge of this one, now considered a classic, and it is definitely deserving of that status.

Review: Witness For The Prosecution (1957)

* * * *
Director: Billy Wilder
Starring: Charles Laughton, Marlene Dietrich, Tyrone Power

It doesn’t get much better than this: a well-constructed courtroom drama with a great twist (crafted by Agatha Christie, no less), Charles Laughton, Marlene Dietrich, and Billy Wilder. I've seen this movie a few times and each time I find myself falling in love with it all over again. It's the mark of a good mystery that even when you know the secret, you can still feel excited watching the revelation play out again.

Charles Laughton stars as Sir Wilfred Robarts, a celebrated barrister recovering from a heart attack and now saddled with a bossy nurse (Elsa Lanchester) who is determined to break him of all his bad habits and make sure that he gets the rest he needs. However no sooner is Wilfred back home than a case comes to him that proves to be irresistible: Leonard Vole (Tyrone Power) is accused of romancing and then murdering a wealthy older woman – a crime which he insists he didn’t commit. His wife (Marlene Dietrich) backs up his protestations of innocence but does so in a manner which inspires more questions than it answers. It isn’t such a great shock, then, when she turns out to be the prosecution’s surprise witness. What is shocking is what happens next, which I wouldn’t dare reveal.

The joys of this film are myriad and begin with Laughton who brings a sharp intelligence to his crusty character. Whether he’s arguing points of law in the courtroom – which, as a slight aside, occurs with refreshing frequency here; this is easily one of the more realistic courtroom dramas I’ve ever seen – or telling his nurse to “shut up,” he brings a kind of rough charm to the role. If the film consisted entirely of just one long monologue by Laughton, it would still be entirely worth watching, listening to him is that enjoyable.

The other great performance is by Dietrich who appears coolly elegant and wholly detached but is harbouring hidden depths and secrets. Mrs. Vole is a German immigrant, rescued from the post war rubble by Leonard and brought to England for a better life. I’ve long felt that Dietrich is at her best in roles like this one and those she played in Judgment At Nuremberg and A Foreign Affair, where she plays survivors of German post war reconstruction and the filmmakers allow her to hit on subtle notes of xenophobia (part of the reason Wilfred thinks she'd make a bad witness for the defense is her accent and, indeed, the courtroom audience's reaction to her adds credence to that) and misogyny. When she and Leonard meet, she’s performing in a cabaret where the soldiers treat her like she’s up for grabs and later she and Leonard make an agreement to trade coffee for sexual favour – post war reconstruction is never a good time to be a woman, but in none of these roles does Dietrich ever seem desperate. Instead she brings a strength and grace to the roles which make it clear that she’s playing women who will always find a way to survive (one of my favourite movie speeches is her “I kept going” speech from A Foreign Affair).

Laughton earned a well deserved Oscar nomination for his role, while Dietrich was passed over for her great supporting turn (a fact which was, by all accounts, quite devastating to her because she was so convinced that she would be nominated). Both actors absolutely shine, as does Lanchester in her small role. As for Power, he’s never really quite clicked for me in this role, partly because it’s hard to buy him as an Englishman when he makes absolutely no attempt to alter his very American midwest accent. For me, though, Power is the only flaw in an otherwise perfect film.