Capitan Kidd

This film is a fictional story of a real man in history: Captain William Kidd. The real Captain Kidd lived from c. 22 January 1645 – 23 May 1701 (death by hanging for piracy) but that is another story.

Captain Kidd (1945) is a worthy sea adventure - a pretty good drama. Great casting lead by Charles Laughton as William Kidd, supported by John Carradine as Orange Povey, Randolph Scott as Adam Mercy & Barbara Britton as Lady Anne Dunstan.

The film is what you would expect from a film of this nature: gold, swashbuckling fight scenes, sunken ships, back-stabbing, treachery, stormy seas, stealing -- just an all around fun adventure film.

8/10

CAPTAIN KIDD begins better than it ends but in between it is great fun to watch, with a super cast to boot: John Carradine, Henry Daniels, Randolph Scott, Gilbert Roland, Qualen, and other character actors - but the pick of the bunch is the cabotin, hammish figure of Charles Laughton as Captain Kidd.

Laughton must have laughed at the prospect of playing a pirate, the very opposite of Captain Bligh in Mutiny on the Bounty.

The downside is that Scott looks out of his depth in a swashbuckler, the script bears some holes that are tough to swallow, and cinematography is none too remarkable. Stunts could be better, Laughton rolling around on the ground fighting Scott takes a great deal of suspension of disbelief... but then Scott and Laughton were known for their gayty.

On the positive side of things, these 86 minutes fly by quite fast!

Definitely worth watching, if you are fond of swashbucklers!

A classic example of a pirate melodrama, this production purports to be based on the life of the historic Captain Kidd (played with campy, eye-waggling mannerisms by Laughton). There are few pirate cliches that don't find their way into Norman Reilly Raine's overwrought script - buried treasures, kidnapped maidens, English nobles masquerading as buccaneers. Much of it is unintentionally silly: It is, for example, impossible to take the hale, beefy, Virginia-twanged Randolph Scott as either an English nobleman or a pirate. Scott claims two friends aboard Kidd's pirate ship, both strangely effete, deferential characters: Another pirate, who acts as Scott's valet, and Kidd's own valet, who spends most of the movie surreptitiously assisting Scott in his scheming against the pirate captain. Kidd's companions, by comparison, are swaggering caricatures, and Kidd spends most of the movie scheming to dispatch them in one of the film's strangest images: Laughton, huddled over a small book, jotting down names or crossing them out, muttering to himself and cackling.

Much of this is good fun, and some of the cinematography is gorgeous - even by today's standards, the use of miniatures and trick camerawork creates a convincing illusion of ships at battle on roiling seas. But the story is so far from history that there seems to be no good reason to name Laughton after the real Captain Kidd, a bumbler whose short career as a pirate and humiliating death was little but a series of bizarre travesties. But the script is awkward and choppy, and many of the set pieces are strangely cramped and stagey, as though this were a theatrical production rather than a film. Ultimately, the true pleasure in watching the film comes from Laughton's peculiar performance, which is similarly theatrical, as though it were an oversized clown act from a London stage transferred to film. He plays Kidd without nuance, telegraphng the captain's bloated greed and amorality as though these were comical personal eccentricities. The closest the screen has since produced to Laughton's outre characterization is Harvey Fierstein's Pirate King character in 1997's Kull the Conqueror, which is pure camp.

Laughton was, in fact, gay, and though this fact is never made overt in Captain Kidd, there is some surprising subtext. Two scenes in particular strike contemporary eyes as having implicitly camp sensibilities - one in which Laughton sniffingly dismisses any interest in female companionship, and another scene in which Scott, a legitimate beefcake, shares a bath with his valet, both happily scrubbing each other while surrounded by hundreds of semi-clad pirates. Yo ho ho.

Like THE SON OF MONTE CRISTO (1940), this public-domain title turned up on local TV some years ago; the film starts off well enough and is enjoyable in itself, but peters out towards the end. Charles Laughton (who reprised the role in ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET CAPTAIN KIDD [1952]) is certainly fun as the title villain, and it was especially gratifying to watch him interact with John Carradine; the great cast features innumerable other familiar faces, though Randolph Scott seems positively ill-at-ease in pirate garb (especially after having just watched him in one of his defining western roles by way of Budd Boetticher's SEVEN MEN FROM NOW [1956])! The low-budget is evident in the film's studio-bound look (despite being mostly ship-set!), its use of stock footage (particularly in establishing shots) and the conspicuous stunt doubles during the duel scene between Scott and Gilbert Roland.

In the tradition of Captain Blood and Horatio Hornblower, this movie has an excellent story, interesting characters, and very good actors. Very satisfying to be sure.