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Posted: |
Apr 26, 2014 - 5:10 PM
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By: |
CinemaScope
(Member)
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Bligh wasn't cruel (I can remember reading somewhere that he didn't use the lash as much as Nelson did), but his man management skills were none existent, he was very sarcastic & rubbed people up the wrong way, & they were too long in Tahiti.
I think Trevor Howard's crooked, murdering, sadistic, cartoon Captain Bligh is even more far fetched than Brando's Christian, but who cares, what an entertaining film!
Would you then say, CS, Hopkins' version of Bligh is a more emotionally intelligent interpretation? I wonder on what basis Howard sculpted his version? It certainly seems to be more of a caricature. And was not Howard a bit too old to play the part? I'd have to agree with you on the notion that Howard's performance is a rubber-stamped nemesis.
I've never seen that version, I will catch up with it one day. Howard did complain about how he had to play the part (I can't remember where I read this), but that fell on deaf ears. Really he was just reprising the Charles Laughton performance (another great movie).
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Posted: |
Apr 26, 2014 - 7:03 PM
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By: |
Rozsaphile
(Member)
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Brando, Brando, Brando. He may have bloated the budget, but his unusual performance never bothered me. The real problem was the script: they never figured out to end the thing. The picture loses focus, energy, dialogue, action . . . Everything falls apart after the mutiny. Kaper has some good, swaggering stuff in the first act, but even he was unable to lend much energy to the second half. I hate sounding off that "my guy is better than your guy," but I am quite certain that Miklos Rozsa would have worked harder to impart some real pathos into the finale. Kaper himself speaks more eloquently of sorrow and loss in LORD JIM.
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Posted: |
Apr 27, 2014 - 2:40 AM
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By: |
CinemaScope
(Member)
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I've never seen that version, I will catch up with it one day. Howard did complain about how he had to play the part (I can't remember where I read this), but that fell on deaf ears. Really he was just reprising the Charles Laughton performance (another great movie).
Really? I don't recall the '35 version all that clearly, but I do seem to recall a lot of blustering and scenery chewing on Laughton's part, something Howard avoided very neatly. Howard's character is more simmering, deeply resentful, a patient reptile waiting his chance to strike ("I've been looking for a way to take the strut out of you!"). I found it much more subtle and intelligent, and in all the furor over Brando's shenanigans I think Howard was shortchanged. The whole film was shortchanged actually.
Thanks, Marlon.
I meant playing the same kind of roll, a sadistic & cruel out & out baddie.
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"Notwithstanding the roughness with which I was treated, the remembrance of past kindnesses produced some kind of remorse in Christian. When they were forcing me out of the ship, I asked him if this treatment was the proper return for the many instances he had received of my friendship? he [sic] appeared disturbed at my question, and answered with much emotion, "That,--- Captain Bligh, --- that is the thing: --- I am in hell --- I am in hell.""
William Bligh, 'The Mutiny on Board HMS Bounty'.
Bligh's own account, which is easy to pick up in papperbok, attributes the mutiny more to the seductive nature of the society they though they might enjoy back among the Otahaiteans, than his own shortcomings.
For a film-maker, it's what you DO with the story that counts, which is why Bolt's notion of psychological mutual envy against a backdrop of the voyage as an inner AND outer journey to the 'other side' where inhibitions get loosed is very compelling, as well as historically good. Not the best directed film, sadly, but a good one. The '60s version is more a general mythic hero allegory, and Brando was right to insist on the sacrificial death, but it's a romance, not history, and sugared up as such.
Who knows what went wrong? As 'The Caine Mutiny' shows very clearly, group psyches in confined spaces produce situations that seem clearcut within the group, but quite different afterwards. One thing is certain, like Capn. Queeg's exemplary previous record, a 3,600 mile journey with no real rations in an open boat to Batavia was no small feat.
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