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.

The Best Picture Countdown #7: It Happened One Night (1934)

Note: this post modified from a previously published post

Director: Frank Capra
Starring: Clark Gable, Claudette Colbert

The modern romantic comedy has its roots in this film, but after seventy years has not improved on the effortless charm of It Happened One Night. Propelled forward by the theory that opposites attract and various romantic misunderstandings, this is not simply one of the best comedies ever made, but one of the best films ever made. Well acted, tightly plotted, and sure-footed in its direction, it offers everything you could want in a cinematic experience.

Ellie Andrews (Claudette Colbert) is an heiress whose father has just annulled her hasty marriage to a fortune hunter. Tired of having her father dictate her life, she runs away (by jumping off a yacht) and goes on the run, determined to teach her father a lesson. On a bus she meets Peter Warne (Clarke Gable), a reporter who agrees to help her reunite with her would-be husband in exchange for an exclusive. Various things happen on the way to New York, including an overnight stay in a cabin divided down the middle by a sheet Peter refers to as the Walls of Jericho, an attempt at hitchhiking (probably the most famous scene of the film), a night spent sleeping under the stars, and a misunderstanding which results in Ellie thinking that Peter has abandoned her and agreeing to go home, then passing him on the road as he’s on his way back to her.

The chemistry between Gable and Colbert is great, with him playing your average Joe, and her playing a pampered princess. The film is at its best when it’s just the two of them onscreen, whether it’s the aforementioned hitchhiking scene (“I’ve proved once and for all that the limb is mightier than the thumb,” she tells him after stopping traffic by showing a little leg), the scene where Peter shows Ellie how a man undresses, or when he schools her in how to dunk a donut (“Where’d you learn to dunk? Finishing school?”). The best is the sequence when they camp out under the stars and she wakes up alone and thinks he’s gone off without her. He returns, revealing that he went looking for food because he knew she was hungry. In this scene we see them begin to realize that they’re in love with each other (although we realize it long before), even though neither is prepared to inform the other of this fact. Ellie still thinks Peter sees her as a ditzy, spoiled brat, and Peter still thinks Ellie believes she’s too good for him. After Ellie finally does admit to Peter that she loves him, he sneaks out while she’s sleeping to go to New York and sell his exclusive story in order to get enough money to propose to her when he returns. However, when he returns to where he left Ellie, he realizes too late that his car has passed her father’s limousine – with her in it – on the way home. Mr. Andrews has agreed to let Ellie marry the fortune hunter, but is hopeful that he can prevent the marriage when he learns that she’s fallen in love with someone else. Mr. Andrews appeals to Peter to stop the wedding, but Peter refuses.

Peter: A normal human being couldn’t live under the same roof with her without going nutty. She’s my idea of nothing.
Andrews: I asked you a simple question! Do you love her?
Peter: Yes! But don’t hold that against me. I’m a little screwy myself.

Gable and Colbert are wonderful here, each providing depth to characters who could easily have been little more than cardboard cut-outs or caricatures. In the camping under the stars sequence in particular both actors are able to convey the complexities of what their characters feel for each other, both the push and the pull. As a director, Frank Capra succeeds by seeming to sit back and allow the action to take place. Nothing in the film feels forced; it all flows so easily. Compare this film to other romantic comedies, where it can occasionally seem like a monumental effort must be made in order to get the lovers together. Here it just seems so natural, the plot moved forward with a lightness of touch that is amazing when you consider how precisely structured the film actually is. It begins and ends with Ellie eloping and with her running away (in the first instance, she runs after eloping, in the second she runs away to elope), and the ending recreates the Walls of Jericho scene, which takes place at the campground which previously kicked Ellie and Peter out because they weren’t married. There’s a lot of repetition/recreation in the story.

There’s so much to love about this movie. It’s smart and funny and perfectly cast. It succeeds because it allows you to get to know Ellie and Peter as people, rather than just as vehicles for comedy, and it’s one of the film’s great strengths that the comedic moments between Peter and Ellie arise naturally out of their different experiences, rather than being forced on them for the convenience of the script. There’s a reason why seventy-six years after its release this film still seems so fresh: it’s just that good.

Review: The Misfits (1961)

* * *
Director: John Huston
Starring: Marilyn Monroe, Clark Gable, Montgomery Clift

“You’re the saddest girl I’ve ever met.” In this line you can hear the echo of writer Arthur Miller speaking to then-wife Marilyn Monroe, just one of many elements of the film which imitate real-life. The Misfits stars Monroe as an emotionally fragile divorcee who finds love with a cowboy past his glory played by Clark Gable. This isn’t the best movie that either star ever made, but it is significant in that it’s the last film either ever completed (Gable would die ten days after filming wrapped; Monroe a year after the film’s release) and there’s something very appropriate about that, given the melancholy nature of the story and these two characters.

The story takes place in Nevada, where Roslyn (Monroe) has come to live for the requisite period to obtain her divorce. During her stay she meets Guido (Eli Wallach) and his friend Gay (Gable) and sets off with them and her landlady Isabel (Thelma Ritter) to Guido’s house outside the city. Guido hasn’t lived in the house since the death of his wife and offers to let Rosalyn rent it. This is a new beginning for Rosalyn, who also starts a relationship with Gay, finding with him what each has failed to find in relationships with others. Both are fundamentally lonely people, disconnected from the people around them, and they’re happily surprised at the life they’re able to build together, though it’s destined to be short-lived. It isn’t long before Gay starts to feel restless and decides to go off “mustanging” with Guido. Roslyn comes along for the ride and on the way they pick up Perce (Montgomery Clift), a rodeo rider who might be even more emotionally wounded than Rosalyn. They go into the mountains where Rosalyn breaks down upon learning that the purpose of this expedition is to round up the wild horses so that they can be made into dog food.

All three men are, to greater and lesser degrees, in love with Rosalyn. Rosalyn loves Gay, but is drawn to both Perce and Guido, who seem so sensitive and in need of affection. There’s a sense that she wants to save these three men, just as she wants to save the horses they capture. The wild horses – which once numbered in the thousands but have been reduced to a handful – are representative of the men, who are in their own way the last of a dying breed. Gay and Perce both defiantly refuse “wages,” preferring instead to earn their livings the way they always have and without having to answer to any boss. Of course the truth of the matter is that they’re broken down and of little practical use to any employer, just as the horses are of little practical use for anything other than dog food. They are all creatures considered past their sell by dates.

The actors are great across the board, especially Gable, who brings a weary charm to his role, but it’s Monroe who captures your attention and holds it in the palm of her hand from beginning to end. Because of her status as a sex symbol (the sex symbol) Monroe isn’t always given the credit she deserves as an actress but here she renders a great and nuanced performance. She can say volumes with just a look – her breathy voice is a large part of her persona but I think she would still have been a star had she come along during the silent era because she has such an expressive face. I honestly can’t say enough good things about her work here, though you could of course argue that she’s only playing herself, the role tailor-made for her by Arthur Miller. I would argue that playing “yourself” would be the most difficult task for an actor since it would require you to expose your foibles to the world’s scrutiny and I would argue that it would be more difficult still to play the version of yourself created by your husband, forced to confront his criticisms of you in such an intense and public way.

The Misfits can be a difficult film to watch, not only because of the personal circumstances of the actors involved, but also because of the subject matter. The scenes of the group out capturing the mustangs would never make it into a film made today because they’re so unblinkingly cruel to the animals. Watching the horses as they struggle to evade capture is profoundly disturbing, more so than scenes of cruelty towards people because no matter how absorbed you are in a film you know on some level that it’s a scene being played by actors, whereas this just is. It’s a very unpleasant aspect of the film, though I recommend it nevertheless.

100 Days, 100 Movies: Gone With The Wind (1939)

Director: Victor Flemming
Starring: Vivien Leigh, Clark Gable, Olivia de Havilland, Hattie McDaniel

To say that Gone With The Wind is a problematic masterpiece is an understatement. It’s depiction of slavery is abhorrent, but it’s important to keep in mind that this isn’t meant to be a history lesson. This is an epic romance which takes place in a fairytale South that never existed, a fact which is apparent in its foreword, which states: “Here in this pretty world, Gallantry took its last bow. Here was the last ever to be seen of Knights and their Ladies Fair, of Master and Slave. Look for it only in books, for it is no more than a dream remembered, a Civilization gone with the wind…” With that as the set-up, you can’t expect to get anything other than a severely white-washed look at the era of American slavery. The world depicted in this film isn’t really worth exploring except for the way that it acts as a backdrop for one of the best characters of fiction, Scarlett O’Hara (played by the fabulous Vivien Leigh).

I find it strange whenever a woman describes herself as being “a traditional Southern woman, like Scarlett O’Hara,” because the entire point of Scarlett is that she’s not your typical woman - Southern or otherwise. Melanie (Olivia de Havilland) is the epitome of the nice, Southern woman while Scarlett is the iconoclast, a woman constantly going against the way things are properly done (such as when she insists on dancing when she’s meant to be in mourning). But it’s easy to understand why women would want to identify themselves with Scarlett, a woman who isn’t entirely likeable but who is cunning, who gets things done and who is, most importantly, a survivor. This isn’t a woman who shuts down and waits to be rescued; she pulls herself up and gets things done while the women around her (especially her sisters) whine and cry. Scarlett’s drive and self-sufficiency are admirable and no doubt a large part of why and how she entered into cultural mythology, especially when you take into account that both the novel and the film entered public consciousness during the Depression. When Scarlett says, “Tomorrow is another day,” she wasn’t just speaking for herself, she was speaking for everyone living a day-to-day existence.

Personally, I love Scarlett. Is she selfish? Yes. Is she a bitch? You bet. But every time she’s swatted down, she just gets back up again, more determined than ever. She’s also kind of hilarious. The relationship between Scarlett and Rhett (Clark Gable) is one of my favourites in film because despite the heavier scenes, there is a wonderful lightness and camaraderie between them. Rhett doesn’t just put up with her crap, he’s amused by it. He enjoys her little temper tantrums, her attempts at manipulation, and her need to be spoiled coincides nicely with his desire to spoil her (one of my favourite scenes between them takes place just after they’ve married and Scarlett is shovelling food into her mouth like it’s going out of style and Rhett jovially suggests that she might want to slow down).

However, as wonderful as the chemistry between Leigh and Gable is, it also presents something of a problem because it makes it all the more inconceivable that Scarlett could spend as much time as she does hung up on drippy Ashley Wilkes (Leslie Howard). It is believable to me that Scarlett would use the idea that she’s infatuated with Ashley to get under Rhett’s skin, but it takes a real suspension of disbelief to buy that Scarlett would sincerely want Ashley, who is such a non-entity that it’s surprising that even Melanie wants him. Howard apparently didn’t want the role, which perhaps explains the lack of “there” there, and his depiction of Ashley really does hurt the movie.

Of course, there are a lot of things that hurt this movie. It doesn’t particularly bother me that Scarlett is the heroine of the film and also a slave owner, because few things irritate me more than slavery/Civil War era films where a character is coded as “good” by being a Southern plantation owner whose slaves are free and work his or her land voluntarily – that’s an easy way out and not very realistic. I think it’s okay that Scarlett is a product of her time and place, a time and place where she would have been raised thinking that it was natural that she should be able to “own” other human beings, regardless of how wrong that concept actually is. Besides which, Scarlett is so self-centered that she probably assumes that everyone, black and white, male and female, is working for her in some capacity. That being said, however, the film’s depiction of slaves is deeply problematic, with the slave characters being either infantilized creatures with no hope of being able to take care of themselves (a character like Prissy), or cheerful people without any particular desire to be “freed,” who seem to want nothing more than to take care of the exasperating white people in their lives (a character like Mammy). If there is any depth to the slave characters, and in the case of Mammy, there certainly is, it is due entirely to the actors. Hattie McDaniel, who won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar, brings shades to Mammy that wouldn’t otherwise exist and makes it almost believable that she’d stick with Scarlett rather than trying to make her way as a freed woman.

There are other problems, too. At 238 minutes, this is a long movie that manages to feel even longer than it actually is. The pacing of the film is bad, perhaps because it went through three directors (Victor Flemming, the credited director and the one who was given the Oscar, as well as George Cukor and Sam Wood, both of whom are uncredited for their work), but also because I think this might be a case of too literal an adaptation. Admittedly, I’ve never read the book Gone With The Wind and I know that certain things were cut out (like the fact that Scarlett had children with all her husbands, not just Rhett), but whenever I watch this, it just seems like the screenwriters were determined to cram everything from the book into the movie, which results in a film that tends to drag in places. There are some great sequences (the burning of Atlanta, the scenes immediately following the end of the war, that great shot where the camera pans back to show the wounded soldiers) but in between there are long stretches that seem to take days to watch. I have no problem calling this film a masterpiece, but it is a qualified masterpiece if ever there was one.

100 Days, 100 Movies: It Happened One Night (1934)

Director: Frank Capra
Starring: Clark Gable, Claudette Colbert

The modern romantic comedy has its roots in this film, but after seventy years has not improved on the effortless charm of It Happened One Night. Propelled forward by the theory that opposites attract, and various romantic misunderstandings, this is not simply one of the best comedies ever made, but one of the best films ever made. Well acted, tightly plotted, and sure-footed in its direction, it offers everything you could want in a cinematic experience.

Ellie Andrews (Claudette Colbert) is an heiress whose father has just annulled her hasty marriage to a fortune hunter. Tired of having her father dictate her life, she runs away (by jumping off a yacht) and goes on the run, determined to teach her father a lesson. On a bus she meets Peter Warne (Clarke Gable), a reporter who agrees to help her reunite with her would-be husband in exchange for an exclusive. Various things happen on the way to New York, including an overnight stay in a cabin divided down the middle by a sheet Peter refers to as the Walls of Jericho, an attempt at hitchhiking (probably the most famous scene of the film), a night spent sleeping under the stars, and a misunderstanding which results in Ellie thinking that Peter has abandoned her and agreeing to go home, then passing him on the road as he’s on his way back to her.

The chemistry between Gable and Colbert is great, with him playing your average Joe, and her playing a pampered princess. The film is at its best when its just the two of them onscreen, whether it’s the aforementioned hitchhiking scene (“I’ve proved once and for all that the limb is mightier than the thumb,” she tells him after stopping traffic by showing a little leg), the scene where Peter shows Ellie how a man undresses, or when he schools her in how to dunk a donut (“Where’d you learn to dunk? Finishing school”). The best is the sequence when they camp out under the stars and she wakes up alone and thinks he’s gone off without her. He returns, revealing that he went looking for food, because he knew she was hungry. In this scene we see them begin to realize that they’re in love with each other (although we realize it long before), even thought neither is prepared to inform the other of this fact. Ellie still thinks Peter sees her as a ditzy, spoiled brat, and Peter still thinks Ellie believes she’s too good for him. After Ellie finally does admit to Peter that she loves him, he sneaks out while she’s sleeping to go to New York and sell his exclusive story in order to get enough money to propose to her when he returns. He returns to where he left Ellie and realizes too late that his car has passed her father’s limousine – with her in it – on the way home. Mr. Andrews has agreed to let Ellie marry the fortune hunter, but is hopeful that he can prevent the marriage when he learns that she’s fallen in love with someone else. Mr. Andrews appeals to Peter to stop the wedding, but Peter refuses.

Peter: A normal human being couldn’t live under the same roof with her without going nutty. She’s my idea of nothing.
Andrews: I asked you a simple question! Do you love her?
Peter: Yes! But don’t hold that against me. I’m a little screwy myself.

Gable and Colbert are wonderful here, each providing depth to characters who could easily have been little more than cardboard cut-outs or caricatures. In the camping under the stars sequence in particular both actors are able to convey the complexities of what their characters feel for each other, both the push and the pull. As a director, Frank Capra succeeds by seeming to sit back and allow the action to take place. Nothing in the film feels forced; it all flows so easily. Compare this film to other romantic comedies, where it can occasionally seem like a monumental effort must be made in order to get the lovers together. Here it just seems so natural, the plot moved forward with a lightness of touch that is amazing when you consider how precisely structured the film actually is. It begins and ends with Ellie eloping, and with her running away (in the first instance, she runs after eloping, in the second she runs away to elope), and the ending recreates the Walls of Jericho scene, which takes place at the campground which previously kicked Ellie and Peter out because they weren’t married. There’s a lot of repetition/recreation in the story.

There’s so much to love about this movie. It’s smart and funny and perfectly cast. It succeeds because it allows you to get to know Ellie and Peter as people, rather than just as vehicles for comedy, and it’s one of the film’s great strengths that the comedic moments between Peter and Ellie arise naturally out of their different experiences, rather than being forced on them for the convenience of the script. There’s a reason why seventy-four years after it’s release this film still seems so fresh: it’s just that good.