Just before the ship sets off, we get a glimpse of the harsh discipline that is believed to maintain order on the king’s ships and the degree to which Captain Bligh believes in that ethos. In addition there are two other ship’s mates, along with the ship’s surgeon, its clerk, its chef, and several commoners who have been “impressed” into service (forcibly rounded up like slaves and “drafted” into service on the ship). The opening sequence introduces the principal characters, including Captain Bligh, the First Mate Fletcher Christian, and Midshipman Roger Byam (Franchot Tone), whose upperclass background is supposed to represent the more principled aspect of British society. This was classic British mercantilism: they were not seeking gold, but looking to tighten the net of their empire. The goal is to collect breadfruit trees in Tahiti and deliver them for planting in the British colonies in the West Indies to feed the slaves. In 1787 the HMS Bounty is ready to depart from Portsmouth for a two-year voyage to the South Pacific. The film narrative passes through five stages that progress from the buildup to the mutiny, then to the event itself, and finally its aftermath. In all the course of all their justly touted screen portrayals, neither Gable nor Laughton surpassed what they did here. But what really stands out in this particular Mutiny on the Bounty are the acting performances of Clark Gable and Charles Laughton. Director Frank Lloyd received his fifth Oscar nomination for Best Director, and Jules Furthman, one of my favorite screen writers, was (along with co-scripters Talbot Jennings and Carey Wilson) nominated for the Best Screenplay Oscar. The film received nine US Academy Award nominations and won the Oscar for Best Picture. It does so by its superb presentation of the conflict between the principal adversaries, Lieutenant (“Captain”) William Bligh and First Mate Fletcher Christian. Although the 1935 filmed version of the story took more liberties with the historical record than did later versions in 19, to me it still stands as the finest expression of the tale. In fact the true account is a fascinating and complicated tale about discipline, duty, and adherence to basic principles of humanity. This was not case with the Bounty mutiny – a court proceeding with surviving witnesses was held back in England to adjudicate the charge of mutiny aboard the royal vessel. Although this fascinating subject was subsequently filmed several times with big budgets and big stars, none of those productions ever matched this 1935 production.Īll treatments of the story address the basic issue: under what circumstances is a mutiny aboard a ship justified? In many cases the task of answering this question is simplified by the fact that one side of the confrontation does not survive to tell its side of the story. The story was made famous in the popular imagination by the “Bounty Trilogy” novels of Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall ( Mutiny on the Bounty, 1932 Men Against the Sea 1933, and Pitcairn’s Island, 1934). ![]() Mutiny on the Bounty (1935) follows the extraordinary, true story of a mutiny aboard the Royal English Navy ship HMS Bounty in 1789.
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