La flibustière des Antilles

This is one of several period sea-faring yarns of its era, which has the added distinction (although not in itself unique) of a female buccaneer at its center. At first, both leads – Jean Peters and Louis Jourdan – might seem miscast but they grow nicely into their roles eventually, thanks no doubt to the talented players (Herbert Marshall, Thomas Gomez and James Robertson Justice) who support them. Velvety-voiced Marshall is uncharacteristically cast as the ship’s obligatory philosophical lush of a doctor, and Gomez is suitably larger-than-life as Blackbeard The Pirate.

The cast is completed by Debra Paget as Jourdan’s wife, who incurs the jealous rage of the tomboyish titular character in whom Jourdan instills the first pangs of love (which, however, does not spare him the occasional flogging or sword-wound); incidentally, the film was the second exotic teaming of Jourdan and Paget in one year, following Delmer Daves’ BIRD OF PARADISE. The direct result of this unexpected softening of Anne’s character is her falling out with Blackbeard’s crew, and her unlikely climactic sacrifice in order to save the lives of the stranded Jourdan, Paget and Marshall.

While the film is not a particularly outstanding example of its type, Jacques Tourneur’s energetic direction and Franz Waxman’s grandiose score ensure an above-average effort that moves along at a brisk pace; incidentally, Tourneur had already done service in the genre with the superior Burt Lancaster vehicle, THE FLAME AND THE ARROW (1950). As usual with vintage Technicolor productions, the cinematography gives the film a sumptuousness that is invigorating. By the way, differing running-times are given for this film (81 or 87 minutes) and, for the record, the version I watched was the shorter one.

Directed by Jacques Tourneur (Cat People, Out of the Past, Night of the Demon) and written by Phillip Dunne (How Green was My Valley) Anne of the Indies is a quite interesting adventure pirate movie. Its main character of captain Anne Providence is based on a real woman-pirate Anne Boney who actually lived and sailed through 18th century's Atlantic.

The film begins with the sea battle where Anne's (Jean Peters) pirate ship attacks a trade ship that was on its way to Europe from the South America. As a result a treasure of great value is captured along with a handsome French officer Pierre La Rochelle (Louis Jourdan), who is taken prisoner. Anne ends up falling in love with him and apparently her feelings are reciprocated but it's only till she sets him free when she discovers that he has a beautiful young wife Molly (Debra Paget) with whom he pretty much in love with. Anne begins planning revenge on both of them but in an unexpected twist of fate ends up making a great sacrifice in order to save them instead. The pirate movie cliché figure of `Black Beard' also makes his appearance here, this time played by Thomas Gomez.

Though Anne of the Indies probably appears to be no more nor less than a revisiting of pirate movie clichés, it still has its classical moments in beautiful visuals and sea battle sequences filmed in Technicolor as well as in some aspects of the story and most of all in personal touches in directing of all of it by Jacques Tourneur. 7/10

Anne of the Indies is good, clean, old fashioned pure entertainment. Pity that Hollywood doesn't make films like this anymore.....

This movie was much better than I expected. ++++ Jean Peters actually does a passable job as a pirate and does decent work in her sword fights. (To the extent she may have a double doing the action, it's hard to tell...but Peters herself obviously is doing a good deal of it, and doing it well.) ++++ With a good and serious script, this could have been an excellent film. But it's basically cheesy. Still entertaining however. ++++ Not up to a regular Jacques Tournier film, but definitely above a regular Jean Peters film. Color is typical of this '50s time period, ie. too garish and not realistic. The actors for Blackbeard and her first mate and the drunken doctor were good. Louis Jordan was a bit weak. I don't think Debra Paget was right either. But certainly Jean Peters and Debra Paget were probably the two best looking female stars in the '50s.

In Anne of the Indies, and not for the first time, Jacques Tourneur takes a fairly clichéd genre (a swashbuckling adventure film doesn't seem particularly flexible) and moulded it to his whim. Other examples include the lesbian subtext of Cat People and critique of populism in Canyon Passage.

And as with these two films, Anne of the Indies' genre bending and most of Tourneur's other semi-studio oddities, it works a charm.

This film is essentially a battle between the feminine and the masculine. Starring Jean Peters as the female-but-hardly pirate Captain Providence, Tourneur uses expectations of gender roles and genre to explore Providence's struggles with her sexual identity. In fact, she remains almost asexual - whilst she shows little interest in men, or only as sexual objects, she is similarly ambivalent (or downright hostile) to women, or "wenches".

Although the cinematography and lighting lacks the stylistic force that is inherent in so many of Tourneur's other films (Cat People, I Walked With A Zombie and Out of the Past most notably), the film is almost thematically flawless. Though these stylistic concerns are to the film's detriment, the script and Tourneur's ability to play strongly to subtle subtexts overcome such problems.