Il prigioniero dell'isola degli squali

This is an engaging film about the doctor who treated John Wilkes Booth after the Lincoln assassination. The film goes on to show how all the defendants in the case were hanged except Mudd. He was sent to a lovely spot off the coast of the Florida keys, but with no air conditioning. We see his treatment and attempt to escape as well. I will not reveal the conclusion of the film, but Dr. Mudd is the origin of the saying "His name is Mudd, now" meaning that you have lost your reputation. Good acting by Warner Baxter and good viewing.

I caught this one on American Movie Classics as part of its John Ford retrospective and found it to be an extremely well-done film that stand up very well for its 60-plus years. Lots of tension, and the action is extremely well-paced. Good acting all-around, especially from Claude Gillingwater as Mudd's feisty father-in-law.

Most history buffs will like this though they may disagree with the portrayal of Dr. Mudd as being complete innocent after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Historians say Mudd knew John Wilkes Booth from often seeing the famous actor on the stage. However, it doubtful if he knew Booth had just assassinated Lincoln and was in flight from pursuing soldiers after breaking his leg while leaping from the Ford Theatre balcony onto the stage. It is now believed by many that Dr. Mudd allowed Booth to remain in his home overnight due to the strain put upon the recently set leg. The next morning Mudd went into town to get a newspaper and then discovered that Booth was wanted for Lincoln's murder. He was thus placed in the uncomfortable position of unintentionally harboring a murderer and if he had notified the police at that time he would never have been implicated in the tragedy. He unwisely chose not to do so and instead returned home to tell Booth to leave. The pusuing troops discovered that Booth had been at the Mudd home and the doctor was arrested and later tried. The movie does give a good presentation of the trial which was a travesty conducted by the military with orders from the authorities to convict and hang all those charged. Booth did luck out a bit by escaping the death penalty. Many legal experts now believe that the trial was illegal since the civilian courts were still functioning. But vengeance was to be extracted and what did befall Dr. Mudd could have been far worse.

Dr. Samuel Mudd thought he was being kindly by setting a stranger's broken leg in the middle of the night. He didn't know the stranger was John Wilkes Booth on the run after killing President Lincoln. Mudd was tried as a conspirator in the assassination plot and sentenced to a living hell to a prison a prison off the Florida Keys. Legendary director John Ford took this true story and turned it into one of the best films about the Civil War. Every scene has true suspense (the assassination itself, troops finding Booth's boot at Mudd's house) or genuine sentimentality (Lincoln asking Union troops to play "Dixie") While Warner Baxter (as Mudd) and Gloria Stuart do wonders with their roles, the real scene stealer is John Carradine. His performance as a sadistic Sargent at Shark Island is chilling, like something out of a horror movie. The ending is a bit dated, otherwise this is top notch John Ford.

Having jumped from THE TALL TARGET to PRINCE OF PLAYERS, you can now turn to this excellent film by John Ford. It's star Warner Baxter has had a very unfair posthumous reputation. He was the second actor to win the Academy Award for best actor for the role of the Cisco Kid in IN OLD ARIZONA (1928), and was overused in Hollywood for the next seven years. As a result, most of his movies were duds. This, and the fact that his Oscar was partly based on a fake-Mexican accent, downgraded a fine acting reputation. It should be remembered that he was the first actor (before Alan Ladd and Robert Redford) to portray Jay Gatsby on the screen. His credits include his tragic, war-weary French army officer in THE ROAD TO GLORY, Alan Breck Stewart in KIDNAPPED, and Dr. Mudd in this film. But most people recall him as Julian Marsh, the struggling, ill producer in FORTY-SECOND STREET, who tells Ruby Keeler, "YOU HAVE TO COME BACK A STAR!"

Historically Mudd's innocence is still up in the air - he had met Booth the previous fall and winter when Booth was going through southern Maryland, studying possible escape routes. But Mudd was a doctor, and (whether or not he knew Booth that April 1865 night)was bound by the Hippocratic Oath to treat him for his broken leg. It really was the image of a southern (and pro-Confederate) doctor treating the leg of the man who shot Lincoln that annoyed Northerners. It is that which convicted Mudd, unfair as it really is.

While Ford's direction, and the performances of Baxter and the cast hold the film well together, Ford does get the atmosphere of hate that permeated the trial of the Conspirators - look at the sequence of witnesses Arthur Byron produces against Mudd at the trial, and how Byron instructs the army officers (who are under him and Secretary of War Stanton) to ignore Baxter's sensible outburst ("Would John Wilkes Booth have intentionally broken his leg to see me?!"). John Carridine's performance is fine, but what is not mentioned is that his sadism against Mudd is based on his fanatical devotion to Abraham Lincoln. There is great subtlety there. Also, after Mudd beats the Yellow Fever epidemic, Carridine is the first soldier to sign a petition for Mudd's release.

It is not a great film, but it is a fine one for all that. Now, if only a modern John Ford can do the definitive movie about that other tragedy of the conspiracy trial: the judicial murder of Mary Surratt.