Pandora

Mention Pandora and the Flying Dutchman to a modern audience and you will be met with blank looks...To a public who thrive on Terminator 4,5,6,etc I suspect this film would be completely unknown.Good reason then for enjoying it (and it's type of film) quietly, while letting the rest get on with Hollywood's more obvious offerings. Unfortunately we don't have actors of the quality of James Mason anymore whose presence here is completely convincing as the otherwordly Dutchman of the title. The photography, clever placing of prop statues on moonlit beaches and raised camera angles viewing the coastal location in a surrealist style all help to create the fantasy illusion that echoes the art of the time....(Dali) etc. More than anything the film works precisely because it was made then.....if it was remade today it simply wouldn't work the people aren't around anymore who would make it work in the 'digital' age. Incidentally the 'voiceover'narration works very well..(as it also did in the maligned original version of Blade Runner....now never shown) In all a great film with a haunting quality....not as well known as it should be.

Freely based on the fantastic and legendary tale of the unfortunate captain who is condemned to travel seas for all time until he meets a woman who loves him so much that will sacrifice her own life . This is a fantasy tale, an immortal legend updated in the 30s set at a Spanish village, actually Tossa De Mar, in which various men : Nigel Patrick, Mario Cabre, Marius Goering, compete for the affections of a gorgeous, exotically lovely woman called Pandora : beautiful young American Ava Gardner. Naturally, she cares for none of them. Then there arrives a lush yacht and its mysterious captain who puts in harbour , James Mason, and things go wrong.

An interesting and glamorous film bordering on the surreal with tought-provoking script and full of exuberant literacy . Interpretations are uniformly good, though story is occassionally bold, as well as non-sense and absurd , at times. Ava Gardner as a playgirl/nightclub singer is precious , being the charming woman romanced by every man in sight and for whom any people should be prepared to suffer strong damnation . James Mason is perfect and usually impeccable self as the enigmatic sailor Hendrick Van Der Zee who is in fact the legendary Flying Dutchman condemned to wander the oceans forever, seeking for his salvation, unless a woman is willing to give up her life for him . Other actors delivering gloriously believable performances are the following ones : Nigel Patrick, Mario Cabre, Harold Warrender, Sheila Shum, John Laurie and several others.

It displays a brillant and sunny cinematography in Technicolor with big splendour visual by Jack Cardiff who was regular cameraman in the colorful films directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. Being marvellously shot on wonderful locations in Tossa de Mar, Cataluña, Spain. The motion picture was competently and skillfully written and directed by Albert Lewin. The flick is so compellingly made that is possesses the inevitability of a masterpiece and considered to be a myth in its style . This filmmaker Albert Lewin was a good craftsman who made a few but pretty nice movies with plenty of thoughtful literature, enjoyable dialogue and combining it by adaptating popular novels, such as : "The private affairs of Bel Ami" , "The Picture of Dorian Gray", "The moon and six pence" , among others. Rating 7. 5/10 , better than average. Well worth watching. Essential indispensable watching. The yarn will appeal to Ava Gardner and James Mason fans.

Funny thing about the legend of the Flying Dutchman is that nobody knows what it exactly is all about. Different stories about the history of the alleged ghost ship exist and different names of its captain also float around. Hendrik van der Zee, as he is being called in this movie, is one of them.

This is a movie I just can't really put my finger on. I don't understand what this movie is trying to tell really. It's hard to label this movie as well. It's a romantic drama with fantasy elements in it as well. It doesn't have an everyday story and also some not so everyday characters in it. Guess the movie is about love and human nature but for me it wasn't very appealing all. The main characters are quite repulsive ones, of which the female deliberately hurt other persons feelings to get what she want and the man killed the woman he loved out of sheer jealousy. Why should we care about a love story between these two. Of course the characters redeem themselves but no, I just wasn't drawn into it.

It's also a rather slowly paced movie. Some excitement wouldn't had harmed the movie. Not that it's dull but its slow pace just makes the movie drag on in parts. You have the feeling that the movie could had easily been halve an hour shorter. The movie does still takes some nice turns though, making this movie all in all still a perfectly watchable one.

The movie is also good looking. It's a period piece, shot in color. It actually was the first motion color picture Ava Gardner appeared in. It still obviously wan't the most expensive movie to shoot, judging by its visual qualities but it helps that movie that it was being shot at location rather than in sound-studio somewhere.

Ava Gardner and James Mason are both obviously some capable actors but because I just wasn't drawn into the movie and it's story I also didn't really got into their characters. Can't blame the actors for that really, since they are obviously doing the best they can with the material given to them.

By all means its not a badly made and constructed movie, I had just wished it's execution would had been a bit more lively and perhaps also some more fun. The movie is being mostly serious of tone, making this movie more heavy than it really should be.

7/10

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.... cause ,though a bit too long,"Pandora" is an unique film .It is part of those movies in which love refutes everything ,including space and time.It is continuously constructed and when it's over we have the strange feeling of having come full circle.

"Pandora" is wrapped in mystery and it renewed the genre which "Peter Ibbetson "and "portrait of Jennie" had pioneered in the thirties and late forties which "Somewhere in Time" (based on a Richard Matheson novel) would continue in the eighties.

Ava Gardner,the most beautiful woman of that era (and for me the most beautiful woman of all time) is ideally cast as the female lead.Who else could play such a gorgeous creature ?James Mason gives a tormented heartrending performance.

Albert Lewin made few movies but the best of them (the picture of Dorian Gray" "the private Affairs of Bel-Ami" ) are worth seeking out.The only real horror is "Saadia" which even Michel Simon could not redeem.

Ava Gardner and James Mason would play another legendary couple (real this time):Francis-Joseph and Elisabeth of Austria.("Mayerling",Terence Young,1968)

The story of the Flying Dutchman is given a sumptuous production here, directed by Albert Lewin. Set in the 1930s, Hendrick van der Zee, the captain of a yacht, appears in the Spanish seaport of Esperanza. There he meets the mysterious and beautiful Pandora, a man magnet who has every man in the village, it seems in love with her. Pandora herself has never been in love, but there is incredible chemistry between her and Hendrick. Hendrick is soon found to be the 17th century Flying Dutchman, cursed to wander the world forever, unless he meets a woman willing to die for him.

Lewin does a good job both on the screenplay and direction, though both have flaws, and the music is a little overpowering at times. The film moves slowly in places. But the casting is wonderful. The only woman who could have played Pandora in 1951 was Ava Gardner, stunningly beautiful and sexy with that low, husky voice and incredible face. And let's not forget her figure which was dressed in dazzling costumes throughout the film. James Mason is handsome and mysterious as Hendrik, and the entire production is gorgeous to look at.

If you're an Ava Gardner or James Mason fan, don't miss this marvelous showcase for their talents. And do they make a fantastic looking couple or what?