La tragedia del Bounty

Clark Gable and Franchot Tone received Oscar nominations in this excellent early Best Picture winner. But it is Charles Laughton (also Oscar-nominated) who gives his greatest performance as the captain who is harsh, strict and unforgiving. However, his true skills are shown when he is thrown off the ship, but never gives up and returns to safety in a small boat with limited men and supplies. The primary actors are solid and the shooting locales are breath-taking. Frank Lloyd's direction lifts a somewhat questionable screenplay to safer waters and the film turns into a Hollywood classic by its final act. 5 stars out of 5.

At that most prestigious of all film studios, MGM, they produced the greatest and grandest sea saga of them all. In 1935 it was considered quite daring to have an over two hour film. But Mutiny on the Bounty holds your interest through out.

All three leads Clark Gable, Charles Laughton, and Franchot Tone were nominated for Best Actor that year and they managed to cancel each other out. Victor McLaglen took home the statue for The Informer with the fifth nominee being Paul Muni for Black Fury.

Clark Gable wisely did not attempt a British accent and yet there was no criticism of his performance as Fletcher Christian. Christian was first mate of the HMS Bounty and a man of conscience. It tears him up inside to see the sadism and cruelty of Captain Bligh on this voyage. The men aren't king and country volunteers as he tells the captain. But the captain has his own ideas.

Normally Charles Laughton played a whole lot of twisted and/or tortured souls for the screen. His Captain Bligh is a man with a deep inferiority complex. The key to him is in the dinner scene on board the Bounty. Watching him, you can see the envy and jealousy he has of the confident and self assured Gable, the callow youth Franchot Tone brimming with idealism and even the surgeon Dudley Digges who despite his drunkeness and crudity is a professional man with some education. It's so much like James Cagney's captain in Mister Roberts and worse because at that time the British Navy gave him the authority of God on that ship.

The conflict between Gable and Laughton is obviously the main plot of the film. Yet there is a subplot that's rarely talked about, the conflict between Gable and Franchot Tone. Tone who was also American, but was stage trained and could fit into a British setting easily, plays Roger Byam one of the young midshipmen on board and who Gable befriends. The key to his character is right at the beginning of the film when he's being sent off to sea by Henry Stephenson playing Sir Joseph Banks. Seven generations of Byam's family have been part of the glorious naval tradition of Great Britain and none have failed in their duty. That should be uppermost in your mind.

Gable and Tone have different ideas of duty and it tests their friendship. Each chooses a different path, yet Tone ends up defending Gable against Laughton. Franchot Tone's finest screen moment for me has always been at his court martial where he makes a stirring speech in defense of the rights of the ordinary British seaman.

As always though the mark of a really great film is the impact those small character roles leave. The men on the Bounty include Donald Crisp, Stanley Fields, Eddie Quillan, Herbert Mundin. My favorite though is Dudley Digges as the ship's surgeon Mr. Bacchus. At the drop of a shilling he'll tell you how he's lost his leg. Outrageous, humorous, and a kindly man who softens the blows of Laughton's harsh discipline, had there been the Supporting player categories then, Mr. Digges would have been my choice for 1935 as Best Supporting Actor.

Even in black and white, made in the studio back lot, Mutiny on the Bounty still holds up well today. Despite two subsequent versions of the story, this version has stood the test of time.

By 1935 the worst years of the depression were over, the pitfalls of the early talkies had been overcome, and Hollywood was starting to regain its confidence. For the first time in several years pictures were being made as big and bold as they had been in the late silent era. And like the flagship of this new era comes this highly fictionalised account of the Bounty mutineers.

Although this is very much a Hollywood production, it may seem a little strange to see that all-American lead idol Clark Gable playing an Englishman. This being the days before such things really mattered, and Gable not really being one to shift his persona too much, he makes no attempt whatsoever at an English accent. And yet he fits in very well. Gable always carried with him a touch of the theatre where he cut his teeth, and proves himself a powerful counterpoint to the blustering Charles Laughton. With his barrel chest, wavy hair and easygoing swagger he does have the makings of a swashbuckling hero, and this is the role Fletcher Christian takes in this adventuresome adaptation. Gable is, in a way, Hollywood's ambassador in the story – just about convincing as an 18th century naval officer, but familiar enough to give US audiences a lead into the movie.

Opposite Gable is a mix of American faces and the British actors who had started to migrate stateside. Charles Laughton's performance as Captain Bligh is integral to the movie. You realise here that Laughton was rather a short man, and he plays on this, making Bligh a jumped-up, Napoleon-complexed bully; all sharp, jabbing motions, an arrogant stance and a face like a dead fish. Alongside Gable and Laughton, the third Best Actor nominee was Franchot Tone, although he is not really exceptional, merely worthy. There is a typically strong turn from Donald Crisp, and Eddie Quillan is surprisingly decent if a little overwrought. The only wrong note is perhaps Herbert Mundin, or at least his character. The bumbling little comedy performer was always good to see in Errol Flynn adventures and the like but he is wrong for this more serious affair. Note how he seems to disappear from the story when the mutiny takes place, which is fair enough – one couldn't really imagine that sweet little chap joining the mutineers or cast adrift and dying by inches.

The director is one of the masters of old Hollywood, multiple Oscar-winner Frank Lloyd. Lloyd's smooth, confident set-ups bring a tense, fractious feel to life on board ship, while never using too much obvious technique as to make it seem artificial. A lot of shots, such as the early one of Gable leading the press gang, show men facing each other in profile, aggressive, combative. In almost every shot we are made to feel the motion of the ship, and even below decks we have the swinging of hammocks. By contrast the scenes on dry land are palpably solid, emphasising the change to a more peaceful life on Tahiti. Lloyd is also one for composing tableaux that are memorable and iconic. There's an odd-looking but very effective shot shortly before the flogging scene, with punishment-doler Morrison staring coldly ahead on the left-hand edge of the frame, that has seared itself into my memory.

And ultimately it is just such a grand, iconic feel that characterises Mutiny on the Bounty. The Herbert Stothart score is a bombastic medley of nautical themes and emotional underscoring. The forceful, rhythmic editing of Margaret Booth provides us with some striking montages. And of course there is the fact that nothing is faked. Full-size replica ships were built and location filming was carried out in Polynesia, with none of the ugly back projection shooting that mars many pictures before and after. Such a mighty production demonstrates why you need such larger-than-life stars as Gable and Laughton. Here is a movie that does everything it can to announce that big Hollywood is back in all its glory.

Based on the then-popular novel by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall, the 1935 MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY is among a series of legendary films of the 1930s that have been repeatedly celebrated for cinematic achievement. And small wonder: the film has a host of powerful assets.

The single most obvious among these is the star power involved: led by two Oscar-winning stars, the critically formidable Charles Laughton and the incredibly popular Clark Gable, the cast reads like a Who's Who of mid-1930s male actors ranging from leading man Franchot Tone to the memorable character actor Donald Crisp. In a visual sense, the film is also a knockout: filmed on location in a full-size replica of the Bounty, it set a new standard for capturing the sea on film. And the story itself is powerful, the tale of the battle between the cruel and autocratic Bligh and the humane and populist Fletcher Christian. Taken together, it makes for a powerful ride.

Still, some viewers may not find MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY all it is cracked to be. Then as now, Hollywood was less interested in getting the facts right than in telling a good story--and from a factual point of view the film is perhaps twenty percent accurate and eighty percent nothing more nor less than historical tarradiddle. That is no real hindrance per se; after all, we're not watching a documentary. But seen from a modern standpoint the cast now feels somewhat problematic.

Charles Laughton was so critically well regarded that he received star billing over Clark Gable for the film, and seen today his performance is easily the single most powerful in the entire film. Autocratic, brilliant, and immediately and increasingly unlikable, he drives the film from start to finish--and it is here, really, in which most of the film's historical accuracy resides. The rest of the cast, however, is extremely Hollywood. Clark Gable, Franchot Tone and all the rest give an excellent show, full of power and drive--but you never for a moment forget that they are indeed Hollywood stars and not members of the British Navy.

This is very much a "big" film in the MGM tradition, often brilliant, often memorable, and often setting new standards for the motion picture industry. And when regarded from that point of view it is extremely, extremely entertaining. But it may also be a film whose power has slightly faded with the passing of time.

Gary F. Taylor, aka GFT, Amazon Reviewer

When watching this great motion picture keep in mind that it is now over sixty (60)years old! Even through the passage of time it provides for entertaining viewing. Charles Laughtons performance as William Bligh captain of the Bounty basically set the standard as how Bligh is pictured and thought of when his name is mentioned. Other actors have portrayed Bligh but it is Laughtons portrayal that is remembered most. The 1984 version with Anthony Hopkins and Mel Gibson is probably a more historical version of actual events but this 1935 classic will most likely always be the sentimental favorite.