Die schwarze Perle

It's 1857. Joel Shore (Robert Taylor) returns to New Bedford, Massachusetts after three years at sea. He hears that his brother Mark (Stewart Granger) had gone missing on a whaling ship. There are rumors surrounding the incident and Joel has questions. Joel marries Priscilla Holt (Ann Blyth) and they board the Nathan Ross.

This got an Academy Award nomination for Best Color Cinematography although I don't really like the way the film looks. It may be technically good, but the story requires grime and salty crust. Everything and everyone looks way too crisp. After the initial introduction, there is the flashback section which is a thriller adventure. I like it and almost wouldn't mind that as the movie. The other main section is the paranoia of potential mutiny and that has too much melodramatic acting. Joel would have tried harder to convince Priscilla. For each element that I like, there is some sort of drawback.

Taylor is captain of a whaling ship in the south Pacific. His wife, Anne Blythe, is also aboard to keep Taylor from getting too nervous. The crew are a mixed lot. Somewhere along the way Taylor's ship picks up Taylor's brother, Stewart Granger, who left home long ago to pursue various unsavory adventures, leaving behind a history of family friction.

Granger relates a tale of falling in with a couple of douche bags, Kurt Kaszner and James Whitmore, who show him a stash of pearls in the lagoon of an island inhabited by hostile natives. Before they can make off with the millions of dollars of rare pearls, the two miscreants are killed and Granger barely escapes alive.

Back aboard Taylor's ship, Granger invites him to forget about any past frictions and join him in getting the pearls. Forget the whaling business. It sounds pretty good to Anne Blythe, who has always had a bit of a crush on the roguish Granger, but Taylor's face is grim as he declares that he, the captain, will carry out the ship's mission, which is to kill whales.

Stewart seduces Blythe and incites a mutiny. That's the kind of guy he is. There is a knockabout fist fight, and Granger changes sides to fight side by side with his brother and -- well, medical discretion forbids the revelation of additional plot details, but, this being a 1950s movie, you can guess the ending.

Interesting to see Stewart Granger in the role of irresponsible and light-hearted adventurer, kind of an Errol Flynn role. Robert Taylor's acting makes a quantum leap in this film -- he manages to suggest two emotions at the same time. As an actress, Anne Blythe had a pretty voice.

The score is by Miklos Rozsa. You can tell from the moment that first signature six-note phrase appears. We're told Rozsa was a musical prodigy. There's no reason to doubt it, but he recycled the same tone and even the same melodies from one movie to the next. Dmitri Tiomkin was also distinctive, but you can tell one score from another. "The Guns of Navarron" doesn't sound like "Red River." But here, if you close your eyelids, you find you're watching "Ben Hur" unroll on their interiors.

I hate to sound too sarcastic about this but it really is a dated by-product of the old Hollywood. It seems to have been ground out like a Sonic Burger. Everyone wears clean clothes. The men are closely shaved except those who look like supporting players and extras who have been instructed to grow beards so they look villainous. The tans are not from the weather but from Max Factor. After a monstrous gut-busting fist fight, nobody has a mark on him -- and this was after "Shane". The scenes aboard ship are studio bound. There's not a puff of wind.

Strictly routine.

This swashbuckling yarn pits Robert Taylor and Stewart Granger against each other as brothers who have very different ideas about how to captain a ship. There's mutiny, island lasses, palm trees, and lots of that flat, too-bright lighting common to Technicolor films from the 1950s. George Folsey received his billionth Oscar nomination for the film's color cinematography, but I'm guessing it was more for capturing some pretty ocean scenery than it was any artistic decisions.

Ann Blyth gives a sub-par performance as Taylor's wife who comes along for the sea voyage. She's a boring character and her presence teeters the film too often into romantic melodrama, when what we really want is more macho battle of wills.

Grade: B-

Brothers on a whaling schooner become romantic rivals. In the South Pacific islands, two brothers, one good and one bad, fight over the same girl and over a bag of pearls. Directed by Richard Thorpe, stars Robert Taylor, Stewart Granger and Ann Blyth. The music score is by Miklós Rózsa. This 1953 film is a remake of the 1923 silent film that starred Lon Chaney, made by Metro Pictures. Thorpe, who by the way was the original director of The Wizard of Oz, enjoyed a long career at MGM. He directed a variety of ¨A¨ productions like Two Girls and a Sailor, White Cargo, Ivanhoe (probably his best), Knights of the around Table to name just a few. He used to be a good craftsman.

Another commenter mentioned the un-likelihood of a whaler captain taking his bride on a projected three-year voyage.

In fact, sailors, a generally superstitious lot, often found women on a ship to be a jinx.

Then, too, today the very act of whaling is so P non-C that a lot of people will object to that aspect, rather than concentrating on the fact the story is set at a time no one saw a particular problem with killing the sea-going mammals for their oil.

Robert Taylor gives one of his best performances; Stewart Granger comes across very well.

Ann Blyth has some good scenes, and some bad ones, but she does them all well.

One really attractive aspect of "All the Brothers" is a superb supporting cast. Peter Whitney, for example, has one of his best roles in a very long career. He too often plays a dumb or bumbling character, but here he is a strong person in a pivotal position.

Leo Gordon has a smaller role, but he stands out, as does John Lupton, in a larger part.

Frank DeKova (whom I met on the set of "Johnny Firecloud") was a superb character actor but who was too often relegated to small roles. He could have been a bigger star, with his talent, but he was recognized by his peers, anyway.

The great Glenn Strange and the great John Doucette were aboard, adding their enormous talents and, as so often true in Hollywood, not getting screen credit.

Come to think of it, this movie is worth watching just for the great cast. But be prepared to suspend your disbelief, and don't look at the blue eyes of the "native girl."