The Captain Hates the Sea

Lewis Milestone, ace director-for-hire, seems to have been having a terrible year in 1934: between the fascinating train wreck of HALLELUJAH I'M A BUM and this one, he seems to have, temporarily at least, lost his way.

Anyway, this picture is another fascinating failure because while there are many wonderful performers and performances in it -- Jack Gilbert, who would die shortly, was not the only actor whose career was on the slide and thus available on the cheap: Victor McLaglen and Wynne Gibson undoubtedly did not command as much money as they would have a few years earlier. Everyone gives fine performances, but they never quite come together as a whole, the way GRAND HOTEL does with its sense of fatality. THE CAPTAIN HATES THE SEA remains a series of vignettes linked by location. Perhaps too much landed on the cutting room floor.

Others have commented on Gilbert, so let me note one of my favorite talents behind the camera: Joseph August. In a third of a century as a director of photography, from William Hart westerns in the 'Teens through PORTRAIT OF JENNIE, he showed you beauty with every shot, and never -- or rarely -- so that you noticed the work that went into it. His traveling shots moved only to tell a story, his compositions focused your attention where it should be, his lighting let you see peoples' faces -- take a look at the Three Stooges, away from the flat light that they worked in for all their shorts. They are suddenly human beings for their few scenes here -- and August was one of the masters of framing. If you have the patience for a second viewing, notice how windows, plants, people, every detail changes the effective shape of the frame, often to superb psychological purpose.

To sum up, this movie as a whole does not work -- normally I would rate it a five out of ten, as another mediocre, derivative work. But the talent on display makes it substantially better than average.

A sort of B version of Grand Hotel but on a cruise ship, The Captain Hates the Sea is fascinating for a couple of terrific performances among the wreckage of this film that seems badly directed because of the confusing plot.

A disparate group of people take a cruise and get involved in the petty squabbles of the crew as well as each other's messy lives. There's something about bonds and bad reputations and undercover cops but none of it makes much sense.

However, John Gilbert, in his final film, is magnificent as the drunk. His voice has never been better and how ironic that this great star, whose career was supposedly ruined by his lousy speaking voice, turns in yet another terrific performance in a talkie. For anyone who has seen Gilbert in this film or Downstairs, Queen Christina, or The Phantom of Paris, you know that Gilbert had no voice problems.

Here is suave and cool and funny in a William Powell sort of way, and he's just mesmerizing to watch. Also very good are Alison Skipworth as the bossy hostess, Helen Vinson as the bonds thief, Walter Connolly as the captain, Walter Catlett as the bartender, Donald Meek as the bearded passenger, Wynne Gibson as the woman with the past, Leon Errol as the ship's mate, Akim Tamriroff as the troubled man, and the Three Stooges as the ship's musicians.

Victor McLaglen and Fred Keating are also after the bonds while John Wray is defending his wife's honor. Claude Gillingwater and Emily Fitzroy are also along for the ride. Quite the cast.

Not a great film but certainly worth a look for the cast and for the superb John Gilbert.

Captain Hates the Sea, The (1934)

** (out of 4)

Disappointing comedy has pretty much been forgotten by everyone except for die-hard film buffs who will probably remember the film not for its quality but due to it running over budget thanks in large part to a cast full of drunks who spent more time drinking than actually acting. The GRAND HOTEL type story takes place on a ship where we get several small stories including a P.I. (Victor McLaglen) tracking some stolen bonds, a writer (John Gilbert) suffering from alcoholism and of course a Captain (Walter Connally) who is constantly making the life of his steward (Leon Errol) a mess. For a comedy this thing really lacks any laughs and perhaps the funniest quote took place off the film. If legend is true, Columbia president Harry Cohn telegraphed director Milestone saying, 'Return to studio. The cost is staggering.' The director would reply, "So is the cast!" Who knows if that's the truth or not but it's certainly funnier than anything else in this film, which is a shame because we're given a very talented cast and most turn in fine performances but in the end there's just not much anyone could do with this screenplay. Considering the troubled production, who knows if there was more to this story that hit the cutting room floor but we're left with a pretty big mess. It seems that the film struggles to connect all the stories but that doesn't matter too much because none of them are overly interesting. I'd say the most interesting one deals with Gilbert but at the same time you have to question why he was given this part. Well, considering John Barrymore was a major alcoholic and ended up spoofing it in his later films I guess you can see why director Milestone would want Gilbert for this role. He certainly looks in pretty rough shape and appears to have aged fifteen-years from what he looked like in a few of his earlier talkies but at the same time he's certainly giving it his all and actually manages to turn in a memorable performance, which would be his last. McLaglen will put a smile on your face in a few of the scenes as will Errol who is constantly getting into trouble. Alison Skipworth, Donald Meeks, Wayne Gibson, Fred Keating and Helen Vinson are some of the supporting performers and they too deliver fine work. The Three Stooges appear as band members but the studio gives them very little to do. In the end, this is a real disappointment considering the talent involved but I'm sure film buffs will get some mild entertainment out of seeing all these familiar faces in one place.

Walter Connolly applies his curmudgeon-with-a-heart screen persona to the character of a ship's captain whose hatred of the sea stems in part from the bad behavior of most of the passengers he encounters. After establishing this fact, we witness the trajectory of a huge number of characters during the course of a voyage from New York Harbor to an unnamed Latin American destination and back again. The cast list alone tells you almost all you would need to know: Besides Connolly there is Leon Errol, John Gilbert and Walter Catlett as a trio of mutually enabling tipplers, bossy harridan Alison Skipworth and sourpuss Charles Gillingwater, Wynne Gibson and Helen Vinson as two very different kinds of requisite pretty young things, Victor McLaglen as a private detective, a very mannered Arthur Treacher as an English major, and the little- known darkly handsome Fred Keating as a rather wimpy crook who resembles various other, better known performers like George Raft or even Russ Columbo, but then you find out he is actually Fred Keating. Added to the mix are Donald Meek as a solitary traveler whose long beard becomes the peculiar obsession of the captain, Akim Tamiroff as a Latin-American revolutionary and even the Three Stooges, playing it straight for a change, as the musicians of ship's dance band! (One of the numbers they play is identical to a number from "Horses' Collars," one of their Columbia short subjects released the following year.)

Sprinkled throughout are some marvelous bits of dialogue, including a series of witty remarks made by Gilbert who keeps rationalizing why he needs to take another drink. For example (and I paraphrase), "This is no time to be drinking…and no time to stop either." Some of the camera setups are also imaginative. When Gilbert, standing at a bar, is punched to the floor by John Wray, we next see him at ground level through a small door under the bar. When characters stop to chat in a ship's corridor, we hear the echo of their voices as we would if we overheard their conversation in that kind of space. When a woman jumps overboard we see her fall from multiple points of view, including vertically through the frame to the shock of people one deck below her leap.

The main thread of the plot, as in Grand Hotel, has to do with people needing money and what they will do to get it, including breaking the law. Subsidiary plots touch on various human foibles and all are touched with humor at one point or another.

If I didn't know better I would bet that Frank Capra or his oft-used screenwriter Robert Riskin had a hand in this effort because the casual yet detailed approach reminds me of their work.

...and this is the final entry in the filmography of one of those people - John Gilbert - so legend has it. This was Gilbert's last film, having been released by MGM just the year before after a prolonged and ignominious fall from the pinnacle of fame over a four year period, starting with his ill-fated first talkie starring role in "His Glorious Night".

The captain (Walter Connally) certainly hates being captain here, though it is not clear so much that he hates the sea. However, he certainly is bored with life in general and his job in particular and wants his steward Layton (Leon Errol) to bring him juicy tidbits about what is going on between the passengers on his ship. The captain never passes up an opportunity to abuse the poor steward. However, the captain is really not the center of attention here at all. The emphasis is on the different passengers and how they interact. Central to the theme is John Gilbert as Steve Bramley, a writer who is losing a battle with alcohol, partly because he won't even try. His constant drinking hijinks are supposed to be funny, but in the context of what was going on in Gilbert's life it just turns out to be poignant.

Actually pretty funny is Victor McLaglen as a private eye who is after a pair who have stolen some bonds. The private eye begins to fall for the female half of the thieving team. A wealthy matron casts a romantic eye at the male half of the thieving pair although he is at least twenty years younger than she. On the dramatic side there is a verbally and quite possibly physically abusive wealthy older man who has wed a girl from the other side of the tracks and won't let her forget it. Columbia always liked lots of mayhem in their 30's comedies, so joining the fray is The Three Stooges as a trio of musicians and Donald Meek as a character whose only point in this film seems to be his beard, which looks entirely fake but is not. That beard captures the imagination of several of the passengers in the way of pranks and bets.

Some have called this a take on the "Grand Hotel" formula, but it isn't sewed together quite that neatly. Also, note that although this film is clearly past the precode era it has plenty of precode devices oddly left in. Although this movie was thoroughly entertaining, Gilbert's performance haunted me not only because of what he was playing - an unrepentant alcoholic - but how he played it. If you look at Gilbert's past talkies he was thoroughly engaged in the parts he was playing. Here he seems tired and worn and just taking everything that he observes as a joke, as if nothing really matters to him at this point. Perhaps he was directed to play it that way, but it did make me sad. The ending did make me glad for Gilbert's character, as there did seem to be at least one constant in his life upon which he could depend.