Mutiny on the Bounty (1935)
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Mutiny on the Bounty Movie Review
Mutiny on the Bounty is a 1935 epic adventure film directed by Frank Lloyd and starring Clark Gable, Franchot Tone and Charles Laughton. It’s an amazing picture.
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“I’ll live to see you – all of you –
hanging from the highest yardarm in the British fleet“
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As the cruel captain of the HMS Bounty, a ship bound for Tahiti, William Bligh wins few friends. When the crew members finally get tired of his abuse, Fletcher Christian leads a mutiny, resulting in Bligh’s removal from the ship. While Christian and the remaining crew sail on to Tahiti, Bligh seeks for revenge, and he targets Roger Byam, a sailor who had actually tried to stop the mutiny.
Let’s first get this annoyance out of the way, Mutiny on the Bounty is consistently being criticized for being historically inaccurate and I simply don’t care about that. If I wanted historical accuracy, I would learn history or watch a serious documentary. This is a motion picture and even the historical genre is not supposed to be entirely accurate, but just the gist of it which here definitely is.
The storyline remains the finest ever about a ship mutiny, there is no question about it. It just might be the greatest adventure film ever made as it’s simply that grandiose. The conflict is perfectly set up, very complex and very grounded in reality. I loved the character interactions throughout this film while the emotional investment is very real owing to the harsh abuse at the hands of this captain.
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As for its adventure elements, they are fabulous as the film is epic in scope, very spirited, a lot of fun and with those island sequences serving as a real story, and not just a detour which it easily could have fallen into. My favorite parts are the mutiny itself, the courtroom drama elements near the end, any scene involving the drama between the three, the friendship between the protagonists and of course that majestic, hugely powerful ending.
The film is famous for being triple nominated in the Best Actor category at the 8th Academy Awards and all three entirely deserved it because there was no supporting category back then. They deserved to lose to Victor McLaglen as his performance in ‘The Informer’ is the driving force of that movie, but still everybody here is perfectly cast and they all excelled.
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Clark Gable is reliably suave, charming and incredibly charismatic. He’s usually like that so this typecasting was perfect for this situation. He’s excellent here and demands attention throughout. The same goes for Franchot Tone who’s equally great, though very different in his more subdued, nuanced role and performance. I loved their friendship, and frequently the best parts of the movie were between these two great actors and instantly iconic characters.
And of course we have Charles Laughton who is also typecast, but gloriously so. This is one of his most iconic performances, and although not as great as his Oscar-winning performance from two years before, it’s still amazing in its own right as he’s simply perfect as this cruel captain. He steals the show from everyone else in terms of the entertainment factor and he here became one of Hollywood’s great villains.
The screenplay is phenomenal and unfortunately it was not rewarded by the Academy, but it’s so rich and nuanced while never sacrificing the fun of it all. Mutiny on the Bounty is also perfectly edited and paced as it simply flies by how incredibly entertaining it is. Not a single scene was wasted or rushed as all serve their purpose, even the island ones as those introduce the film’s sweetest, most romantic and elegant procedures. The score itself is absolutely superb and never has there been a better use of the classic Rule, Britannia!
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Thanks to a terrific, nuanced script, fantastic character interactions, a great friendship at its core, a classic villain and a greatly portrayed conflict, Mutiny on the Bounty is also incredibly entertaining given how well paced, immensely adventurous and epic it is. The film famously got triple acting Oscar nominations at the 8th Academy Awards and deservedly so as Franchot Tone is phenomenally grounded here, Clark Gable is per usual very charismatic and Charles Laughton is perfectly cast as villainous Captain Bligh. The cinematography and score are also splendid as is the direction from Frank Lloyd. Consequently, this is the best film of its year and probably the greatest adventure flick of all time.
