Mutiny on the Bounty (1935) Director: Frank Lloyd
“A Thousand Hours of Hell For One Moment of Love!”
★★★★☆
A classic story of heroism and betrayal, Mutiny on the Bounty is a film wherein both the villain and the hero are actually complex and multi-dimensional characters; they are both sympathetic and yet also worthy of a degree of skepticism. I thought this was a great film, well deserving of its Best Picture win in 1936 –and in my view, it remains far superior to Frank Lloyd’s previous Best Picture win a few years earlier, Cavalcade. Notably, all three lead actors in Mutiny on the Bounty –Clark Gable, Charles Laughton, and Franchot Tone– all received Academy Award nominations for Best Actor (none of them victorious). This eventually led to the creation of the Best Supporting Actor category the following year. And interestingly enough, Mutiny on the Bounty was the last Best Picture-winner to date not to win in any other category. Despite some glaring historically inaccuracies, of the four different cinematic versions of this true story, 1935’s Mutiny on the Bounty is rightly regarded as the best –it is yet another triumph for MGM’s golden producer, Irving Thalberg! Though tragically suffering from poor health and a recent heart attack, Thalberg would pass away only a year after Mutiny on the Bounty was released (1936) at the age of twenty-seven. As one of his final acts in Hollywood, Thalberg declined to produce yet another epic period piece when offered Gone With The Wind. He noted that it would likely be a “sensational” role for Clark Gable, but since Gable had just completed Mutiny on the Bounty and The Good Earth, he claimed was exhausted from performing in these types of epic films –at the time, he coyly told Louis B. Mayer “[n]o Civil War picture ever made a nickel!”
Mutiny on the Bounty tells the swashbuckling tale of the British Royal Navy during the late 18th century. Captain William Bligh (played by Charles Laughton, though others like Wallace Beery were initially considered for the role) is the tyrannical leader of the H.M.S. Bounty. Day after day, Captain Bligh brutally punishes his shipman in order to maintain strict order aboard the vessel. One his somewhat ambivalent allies is Midshipman Roger Byam (played by Franchot Tone, based on the historical figure of Peter Heywood). Eventually, Fletcher Christian (played by Clark Gable, who was initially resistant to the role because it meant shaving his trademark mustache) becomes the leading recalcitrant lieutenant who stands up to Bligh as he leads his fellow crewmen in plotting a mutiny to overthrow Bligh. When they rise up, Fletcher and the crew cast Bligh and his loyalists adrift in a skiff, believing he is unlikely to survive, but the boat later finds ground thanks to Bligh’s expert navigation, and Bligh vows to seek vengeance on the mutineers. Throughout the whole mutiny, Midshipman Byam remained in his room and when he discovers what happened, he expresses his disapproval. Meanwhile the remaining Bounty crew make landfall and settle into a new life in Tahiti –Fletcher marries Maimiti (Mamo Clark) and has a child, while Byam marries Tehani (Movita Castaneda, Marlon Brando’s second wife before he later fell in love with and married Tarita Teriipaia, who played Maimiti opposite Brando in 1962’s Mutiny on the Bounty). Before long, an English ship, the HMS Pandora, arrives in Tahiti and Byam decides to greet the ship while Fletcher flees the island. But when Byam boards the Pandora, he is unfortunately met with the stern face of none other than Captain Bligh who accuses Byam of being a mutineer. Byam is returned to England where he faces a trial, but after describing Bligh’s harsh treatment of the crew, Byam is exonerated and pardoned by King George III before continuing his career in the Royal Navy. The film ends with Bligh unable to exact his revenge on all the mutineers while Christian Fletcher makes landfall at Pitcairn island where he burns the remnants of the Bounty.
Mutiny on the Bounty is a wonderful film –I am a sucker for a grand swashbuckling Royal Navy movie akin to Horatio Hornblower or the Aubrey-Maturin series– and I was amazed to learn this film was partly shot on location in Tahiti, as well as near Catalina Island, Santa Barbara, Monterey Bay, and other West Coast locations. Amusingly, James Cagney was an extra in this film. He apparently ran into director Frank Lloyd while sailing his boat near the shoot in Catalina Island (he was then on a hiatus from Warner Bros during a contract dispute). Cagney appears briefly as a crewmen at the outset of the film (along with a young David Niven and Dick Haymes). Based on the Nordhoff-Hall trilogy of books (which actually departed at points from the historical mutiny), some of the more notorious inaccuracies in this film include the following: Captain Bligh was never actually aboard the HMS Pandora, he was not present at the trial of the mutineers who stayed on Tahiti, Fletcher Christian’s father died many years before the departure of the Bounty and thus he could not have attended the concluding trials, Bligh is also portrayed in the film as an utterly sadistic individual with the use of keelhauling and flogging a dead man, though neither of these actually happened (keelhauling was used rarely, if at all, and had been abandoned long before Bligh’s time and the meticulous record of the Bounty’s log reveals that the flogging rate on the ship was lower than the average for that time), the real Captain Bligh was forced to take control of the ship’s medical care when the ship’s surgeon, Thomas Huggan, was shown to be an abusive alcoholic (Bligh used what medical care treatments he learned under Captain James Cook), the real mutiny was a bloodless revolution and the story about Bligh placing several crewmen in iron cuffs as depicted in the film is fictional, and despite Fletcher Christian’s rousing speech about creating a free society in Tahiti, in reality he and his men had enslaved many Tahitians who later rose up and killed them. However, there were plenty of other historical details that were meticulously researched for this film –including the customs and clothes worn at the time, and even 18th century maritime law was fairly accurately captured.
Credits:
- Directed by: Frank Lloyd
- Written by: Talbot Jennings, Jules Furthman, Carey Wilson, John Farrow (uncredited)
- Based on: Mutiny on the Bounty, a 1932 novel by Charles Nordhoff, James Norman Hall
- Produced by: Frank Lloyd, Irving Thalberg
- Starring:
- Charles Laughton…..Captain William Bligh
- Clark Gable…..Fletcher Christian
- Franchot Tone…..Midshipman Roger Byam (based on the real Peter Heywood)
- Movita Castaneda…..Tehani
- Mamo Clark…..Maimiti (based on the real Mauatua)
- Herbert Mundin…..Alexander Smith, a mutineer whose real name was John Adams
- Eddie Quillan…..Thomas Ellison
- Dudley Digges…..Bacchus (based on the real Thomas Huggan)
- Cinematography: Arthur Edeson
- Edited by: Margaret Booth
- Music by: Herbert Stothart
- Distributed by: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
8th Academy Awards
Held on March 5, 1936, at the Biltmore Hotel, the 8th Academy Awards ceremony was hosted by AMPAS president Frank Capra. This was apparently the first year in which the awards were called “Oscars.”
- Best Picture: Mutiny on the Bounty (amazingly, Mutiny on the Bounty beat out eleven other contenders, including three from its own studio, MGM, but it did not win in any other categories).
- Alice Adams
- Broadway Melody of 1936
- Captain Blood
- David Copperfield
- The Informer
- The Lives of a Bengal Lancer
- A Midsummer Night’s Dream
- Les Misérables
- Naughty Marietta
- Ruggles of Red Gap
- Top Hat
- Best Director: John Ford – The Informer
- Michael Curtiz – Captain Blood (write-in, not official nomination)
- Henry Hathaway – The Lives of a Bengal Lancer
- Frank Lloyd – Mutiny on the Bounty
- Best Actor: Victor McLaglen – The Informer as “Gypo” Nolan
- Clark Gable – Mutiny on the Bounty as Fletcher Christian
- Charles Laughton – Mutiny on the Bounty as Captain Bligh
- Paul Muni – Black Fury (write-in, not official nomination) as Joe Radek
- Franchot Tone – Mutiny on the Bounty as Byam
- Best Actress: Bette Davis – Dangerous as Joyce Heath (The Academy voters, who felt guilty about not awarding Bette Davis a Best Actress award the previous year, assigned her one for Dangerous, which was generally viewed as a lesser picture).
- Elisabeth Bergner – Escape Me Never as Gemma Jones
- Claudette Colbert – Private Worlds as Dr. Jane Everest
- Katharine Hepburn – Alice Adams as Alice Adams
- Miriam Hopkins – Becky Sharp as Becky Sharp
- Merle Oberon – The Dark Angel as Kitty Vane
- Best Original Story: The Scoundrel – Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur
- Broadway Melody of 1936 – Moss Hart
- G Men – Gregory Rogers (pseudonym of Darryl F. Zanuck) (write-in, not official nomination)
- The Gay Deception – Don Hartman and Stephen Morehouse Avery
Did the right film win Best Picture?
I think Mutiny on the Bounty remains a superlative choice for Best Picture in 1935 and a wonderful send-off for Irving Thalberg, the “Boy Wonder” of early Hollywood with this being one of his final pictures before his untimely death in 1936. Mutiny on the Bounty features superb performance from both Clark Gable and Charles Laughton, a memorable score composed by Herbert Stothart, and an unforgettable swashbuckling adventure story beautifully shot in black and white. This film comes highly recommended from me.
Click here to return to my film reviews.
Click here to return to my survey of the Best Picture Winners.