Le capitaine Kidd

This low-budget swashbuckler starts on Magadascar where Captain Kidd (Charles Laughton)attacks the vessel called ¨twelve apostles¨. London, 1699, Captain Kidd receives a card from the King William III(Henry Daniell): ¨Upon the solicitation of my Lord Bellomont, his Majesty is graciously pleased to order to attend up him at Hampton court , upon the morning of November 13, at nine of the clock , captain William Kidd, ship master, of New York, with intent to discuss a voyage of portent to the waters of India and Magadascar¨.Then Kidd is assigned by King William III to escort on the high seas a ship plenty of treasures from Calcuta until England. As he enlists a misfit crew(Scott, Roland,Qualen, among others) formed by thieves and killers, including to Orange Poverty(John Carradine) who had previously abandoned on an island of Magadascar.

Charles Laughton made an excellent acting as Kidd, a roguish, sly, ironic and traitor pirate, lookalike his character of ¨Jamaica Inn¨ by Hitchcock. Later he retook this role in farce style with ¨Abbot and Costello meet captain Kidd¨ by Charles Barton. However the starring Randolph Scott is miscast because is usually in Western and here he's out. Good secondary cast formed by prestigious secondaries as John Carradine,Henry Daniell,John Carradine, John Qualen, Reginald Owen and Gilbert Roland. the motion picture is professionally directed by Rowland V Lee.

The story is partially based on real events , the actual deeds happened of the following manner : Kidd was born 1865, Scotland. The military staff hires him to command the ship called ¨Blessed William¨ during the war of nine years(1688-1697) between England and France. Then Kidd sacks the vessel Marie Galante and numerous French warships.After gets license from British admiralty for exercise as buccaneer, commanding the ¨Adventure Galley¨ with 34 cannons and 80 men. He decides to plunder the ¨Quedagh Merchant¨a galley full of treasures and another ships of various countries. Then the captain found himself held capture and transported to England where he was condemned to death penalty in 1701. He was hung but the rope broke itself two times. His corpse was charged in chains throughout of river Thames as warning and punishment.

Another films about this historical character are : ¨Double crossbones¨(1950) by Charles Barton with Alan Napier as Kidd; ¨Against all flaggs¨(1952) with Robert Warwick as Kidd; ¨Great adventures of Captain Kidd¨ with John Crawford; and ¨Kidd and the slave girl¨(1954) by Lew Landers and Anthony Dexter as the famous pirate.

There's plenty of good action and intrigue in this fictionalized account of the infamous "Captain Kidd". Charles Laughton is in his element as the treacherous, clever pirate captain, and he is given good support from the rest of the cast and from the overall production.

The story starts with Kidd having just successfully completed one of his attacks, and using it as a springboard for a more ambitious and daring plan to make himself an English lord. Despite the rather far-fetched nature both of his scheme and of much of the plot as a whole, Laughton's rousing performance and the movie's other strengths carry everything off nicely.

The story setup is nicely conceived, pitting Kidd and his deceitful scheming against some fully worthy adversaries with plots and secrets of their own, with John Carradine enjoyably spiteful as Kidd's long-time untrustworthy partner, and Randolph Scott as a mysterious convict who gets recruited to be Kidd's master gunner. The three of them join in an entertaining battle of nerves and wits, with most of the other characters serving as useful pawns in their game. Reginald Owen also pitches in as something of a wild card character whose loyalties are, for a time, uncertain.

The action sequences are good, and they are also interspersed at well-chosen intervals in the main plot. It has plenty of interesting detail that sets off the action nicely. This is the kind of action-packed movie that, as long as you don't pause to analyze it too closely, provides very good entertainment with a lot of interesting story developments.

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.

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!

Ahoy, mateys! 1945's Captain Kidd is a small gem of a swashbuckler with Charles Laughton, all menacing pudginess, spastic hair, and bad table manners, as the roguish pirate masquerading as a legitimate British sea captain. He and his dwindling posse of baddies (Guess who's causing them to dwindle!) are aiming to hijack a British freighter out of In-Jah, scoop up some loot already buried, have their way with a proper English lady, and whack Randolph Scott, the only man who can reveal their perfidy.

It's all so much yo-ho-ho and the actors seem to be having one heck of a good time. The only problem with the film is that, for 1945, the production values are so poor and the film is so murky that the whole thing looks like it's ten years older.

Find a copy of it in the dollar DVD dumpster at Wal-Mart and have a great time with Laughton chewing (with his mouth open) the scenery and Randolph Scott looking handsome in a series of sailor suits.