Plot Intro
It’s 1787, and the HMS Bounty sets sail from Portsmouth, bound for Tahiti to stock up on exotic fruits. The crew consists of its leader, Captain Bligh (Charles Laughton), the lieutenant, Fletcher Christian (Clark Gable- again!), a midshipman named Roger Byam (Franchot Tone), and collection of criminals and young men forced into a life at sea by press gangs. Bligh, however, quickly turns out to be the ultimate in tyrannical, unjust leaders, submitting many innocent men to flogging, imprisonment, starvation and keelhauling. This prompts an increasingly discontent Fletcher to stage a mutiny- and face the consequences of such extreme an action. It’s a true story, but many historians contend the accuracy of this version.
Here’s a film you can really get your teeth into. On the one hand, it’s a cracking good yarn on the high seas (lots of waves, but no pirates). On the other hand, it’s a parable about oppressive leadership, as well as the dangers of rising up against it. In both instances, it succeeds by doing most of the work for its audiences (i.e. characters’ motivations and the consequences of their actions are explained clearly) but it doesn’t patronise them by turning the whole thing into a Jerry Bruckheimer-esque effects-laden action flick.
The inimitable Charles Laughton, the ultimate character actor in the early days of film, steals the show as the villainous Bligh. Bligh would have been an easy allegory for Hitler in 1935 but the writers don’t resort to portraying him as basically the Devil himself. When Bligh and his followers are evicted from the Bounty, Bligh becomes their only source of survival. His determination and resoluteness make him weirdly admirable (shame about the old underlying sadism but hey! Nobody’s perfect). For me, he overshadowed Clark Gable entirely. Gable plays far more engaging characters in the previous year’s winner, It Happened One Night, and the gargantuan Gone With the Wind. Here, he’s a pretty basic handsome hero and proclaimer of justice.
It’s Franchot Tone’s Roger Byam that interested me the most because he seems to represent the pendulum that swings between the villainous Bligh and heroic Fletcher. Whilst he disapproves of Bligh’s ruthless and corrupt leadership styles, he also attempts to prevent the mutiny itself, pointing out that this, also, is illegal and would be considered treacherous in a court of law. By the end of the film, we realise that the entire tale is about him, as the script concentrates almost solely on his attempts to prove his detachment from the mutiny despite his lack of allegiance to Bligh. A complicated situation proving that, in a court of law, sometimes concepts of “innocent” and “guilty” are not as clean-cut as they seem.
The film’s not perfect- the natives we meet on Tahiti are distinctly non-South Pacific and are written as simple-minded, blank-smiling island folk (ahem, slightly racist, cough); the film’s last 20 minutes feel rushed and almost demanded an extra half hour in which Byam defends himself in a court of law; also, the characters who stay loyal to Bligh after the mutiny remain unexplored and I would have liked some insight into why they remain with their captain out of choice when he has acted so abominably.
These are minor quibbles though, I’d recommend this film to most and, for us, it’s been refreshing to have a romantic comedy, then a sea-faring adventure after weeks of epic humanity-pondering in the very early Oscar winners.
Highlight
You can’t help but cheer during Byam’s final scene in the courtroom towards the end of the film. He exposes Bligh, and lectures the court on the perils of sea-faring and corruption and it’s stirring stuff.
Lowlight
The Tahiti islanders had almost nothing to do except be massive racial stereotypes. Even the director of King Kong is shaking his head.
Mark
7/10
Pirates! Villainous Captains! Over-use of the word ‘Seamen’! The poster alone insists that this is a swashbuckling epic of a film, brimming with heroes and dastardly baddies, all set against the sweepingly romantic background of the roaring sea. It’s got all the ingredients of a superb flick: dashingly handsome hero Clark Gable, excellent character actor Charles Laughton, blonde dimpled ingenue Franchot Tone and some mildly racist stereotypes of frighteningly happy island-people - what more could one ask for?
Plot-wise it doesn’t do much more than the age-old formula of ‘Dickhead Character Gets His Comeuppance’ in that Charles Laughton is pretty flat-out horrid and then gets chucked off his own boat by the heroic Clark Gable. One main point of discussion between me and Paul was whether Gable looks better with a moustache (see It Happened One Night) or clean-shaven (Mutiny on the Bounty). I think moustache but so far we disagree.
Film-wise it’s fine. What annoyed me particularly was that the scrolling text at the beginning stated that the Bounty’s mutiny actually led to changes in how the naval forces behaved towards their crew. However after two hours of fairly simple plot, we don’t get any sense of how or what changed - and how the Bounty played any part in it. It feels a bit like they missed a trick, focusing too much on Laughton (who is, to be fair, splendidly nasty) and Gable (who is not quite up to his previous year’s performance). The whole thing doesn’t really have much of a pay-off, for all the shots of ships crashing through storms while sailors are being whipped.
I think - as Paul says - they are trying to display a layered plot, with Franchot Tone becoming the focal point, representing the struggle between duty and what is right. But not enough is made of this to actually have much of an impact, and it also happens in the last half hour which is rushed through whiplash-fast (one second he’s in court, the next he’s making a speech, the next the King is writing a letter, the next he’s on another boat looking chirpy). There’s so many plot holes and unanswered questions that I’m left wanting to google it to find out what actually happened.
That said, it’s a fun Sunday afternoon picture and while I don’t feel it really deserves a Best Picture win, it’s got sailors and people rushing purposefully around boats while storms rage on in the background.
Highlight
Charles Laughton wandering around just generally being awful to everyone.
Low light
Answers to how the Bounty’s mutiny actually changed naval practices are sadly lacking.
Mark
4.5/10
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