Mutiny on the Bounty

The 1935 Oscar for Best Picture went to MGM's Mutiny on the Bounty, directed by Frank Lloyd and based on a popular novel. The film has been remade twice since then, with lessening impact and quality, the original remaining the best version.

The film offered some big star power, with Clark Gable as Fletcher Christian and Charles Laughton as Captain Bligh, with new and upcoming star Franchot Tone as Byam. All three would be nominated for Best Actor, the only time there have been three nominees from the same film in that category. They all lost, though, to Victor McLaglen in The Informer (that film also won Best Director for John Ford and best screenplay for Dudley Nichols, though Mutiny far outpaced it in the Best picture balloting--results were made public in those days).

Of course, the story concerns a British cargo ship, The Bounty, which leaves Portsmouth bound for Tahiti. Early on we get a glimpse of how unfair life was in those days--Christian goes to a pub and presses a half-dozen men into service, a rustic form of the draft, with no excuses tolerated. Once these men are aboard it becomes evident that Captain Bligh is not just a strict disciplinarian, he's psychotic, exercising power simply to make himself feel powerful. Freud would have had a field day. His offenses include having a man flogged after he is already dead, and sending Byam up into the rigging during a storm.

Once the ship reaches Tahiti, which is a paradise for the men, Christian has just about had enough. When the ship's doctor dies after Blight forces him out of his sick-bed, Christian decides to mutiny. He seizes Bligh and sets him adrift in an open boat with some meager supplies. Byam, who wants no part of the mutiny, isn't allowed on the boat with Blight. The Bounty returns to Tahiti, where Christian marries a local girl and starts a family.

The film then follows Bligh as he and his supporters complete an incredible, 3,500 mile journey to safety. Much later, he returns to search for the mutineers.

While this film is historically inaccurate (many historians feel that Bligh's reputation is undeserved) it's still a rousing adventure and succeeds on almost all levels, both as rollicking yarn and as a psychological study of a power struggle. Christian, embodied by the matinee idol Gable, is clearly depicted as the hero, while Laughton, scowling and homely, is the villain. However, Laughton invests the character with more than even the script indicates, and though certainly a martinet, he is more complex than what first meets the eye. The scenes involving his voyage in the launch shows what a great seaman he is.

The subplot involving Byam, who is a fictional character, is also well-handled. A trial scene near the end of the film is well-done, even though there's a somewhat grandiose monologue by Byam at the end.

The look of the picture, though in black and white, really gives on a sense of both the harshness of life on the sea and the paradise that is Tahiti (the natives there are somewhat patronizingly viewed as eager to help the British). This film richly deserves its status as a classic.