Best Picture 8 (1935) Review: Mutiny on the Bounty
By: Patrick Ramsey
Tags: Best Picture, Cinema, Clark Gable, Óscar, Charles Laughton

How Frank Lloyd used anger, comedy and female window dressing to score a second Oscar for Best Picture.

Gable and Laughton ~Wikipedia

Frank Lloyd, two years fresh of having directed an epic piece of cinema that covered the beginning of the 20th Century, again won accolades for Mutiny on the Bounty, which won him accolades and Oscar nods, if not the statue itself, which went to John Ford for his work on The Informer. MGM, Lloyd’s studio had already completed several films per year that were nominated for best picture, but its last win had been Cavalcade, directed by Edmund Goulding.

Frank Lloyd ~ Wikipedia

According to Andre Soares and his research of Lloyd via Michael Sragow, Lloyd’s directing style tended to be more studio than artful, which no doubt amounts to efficiency and a minimization of risks. He also noted that Lloyd was partial to maritime films, which, if correct, gave him the motivation to create a high quality film in Mutiny on the Bounty.

This year, as did the previous one, also offers up Gable as a leading man to play mutinous master’s mate Fletcher Christian, so it is apparent that the Academy had not overdosed on Gable from It Happened One Night. Watching and rewatching it, first be entertained and then to evaluate, the former leading man creates some of his best solo work in the film, as he doesn’t have Claudette Colbert to serve him up any sort of banter with which to verbally tangle. Instead, he must produce mostly anger, as there is no leading lady of any significance. The closest female to serve in this capacity is Mamo Clark, who plays the part of Maimiti, the Taitian king’s daughter, but the script gives her zero personality save adoring and supporting whatever Gable is doing. In many of his other roles, many of Gable’s other characters give him a major player to work with, but instead we are left almost exclusively with various crew members.

One of them, Byam, played by actor Franchot Tone, is an eager officer who is commissioned to create a Taitian dictionary when he gets to Tahiti, which is the destination of the crew. Tone’s character, historically fictional, is a friend of Christian and one of the ship’s officers. He serves as the film’s first encounter with Captain Bligh, played by Charles Laughton, at ordering discipline while at sea that is highly questionable in terms of safety. Byam is forced to climb to the top of the ship’s mass in volatile weather and “sit in the corner” per say after hitting another officer that was provoking him, but doesn’t admit to doing so. In this case, Gable goes up against Bligh, who is both austerely strict and completely insistent that he is always in the right and doesn’t care for advice or opinions from anyone. Although Christian frequently speaks truth to power, it is of no avail.

Wikipedia

Laughton, also a well-known Hollywood weight at the time, is arguably Gable’s main counterweight in the film. Not only does his reputation precede him, which we observe in the tavern in the first scene during conscription, but his first act of discipline while not even yet having set sail, is to whip a corpse, just so he could be satisfied that a punishment is carried out. Laughton is steadfastly grim-faced the entire film, letting up only when he is communicating with the Taitian king. In fact, he is so completely disagreeable all of the time that it diminishes the dimensions of his character. One wonders who he was nice to in order to be captain as there is little redeeming about him the entire film. While this gives Gable plenty of provocation to rage against, it weakens the film as a whole. If the English Navy has “good old boy” qualities, who are Bligh’s good old boy friends? The only answer to this insinuated in the film is that Bligh is such a good seaman that his skill cannot be ignored.

One of the aspects of Mutiny on the Bounty that shines in places is character acting. Since there is no romance on which to center the film, taking advantage of Gable as a leading man (both Christian and Byam take Taitiah wives, but they are window dressing) the ship’s crew gets mini vignettes and moments within the script. The ship’s doctor, Bacchus, is missing a leg and gives alcohol as medicine. Duddley Digges overwhelms with his comic relief, being both a poor doctor, abusing alcohol and providing tall tales. Herbert Mundin, playing Smith, the latrine cleaner, plays a sailor who is more afraid of the captain than anyone else, and who performs slapstick tasks such as forgetting what is being said when Laughton thunders at him. Normally a sailor might get angry at this, but Smith acts as if he has just forgotten where he was.

Having given Gable an opportunity to display his acting chops in the emotion of anger, it also successfully portrays him as an unfortunate tool of the monarchy, which was in the hands of the same King George that fought the American colonies. The film’s first scene seeks to portray cruelty in the English system, with unsuspecting people in a tavern being drafted by the navy using Christian and a handful of militia with him forcing them into service. In particular, the scene focuses on a man, Ellison, his wife, and their new baby. Gable portrays Christian as resolute in requiring service, but kind in how the conscription is carried out. Later, the man being caught attempting to flee from service before the ship departs, is caught, and Christian is lenient and even wins him over. The austerity of the English system is glossed over here by Gable’s friendly demeanor, but it foreshadows the later court martial scene in which Byam, who had been forced to stay with the Bounty by Christian, is cast by Bligh as a traitor.

Gable and Laughton ~ moviesteve.com

Gable’s easy-going manner seems to serve as the film’s best practice for wielding authority and the actor easily falls into the hero’s mold. The portrayal of Christian is rather like a utopian imagining of what paradise could be for men who were forced into such a predicament, but in fact, the historical trajectory of Fletcher Christian and the mutineers ended quite violently.

This particular version of the Bounty story, penned by novelists Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall, came from a co-written trilogy between the two after they had taken residence in the Society Islands in Tahiti. An earlier version of the trilogy was released two years earlier starring Errol Flynn.

Mutiny on the Bounty is in good company in regard to historical stories. The entertainment industry, and in turn, the Academy, had already chosen several to bestow the highest honor. What makes the Bounty different is that it is more of a biopic in terms of history. Though the romantic aspect of the film is fictitious, it is based in truth. The contrast between art and historical fact here obviously presents the idea that romance and entertainment win when readers and viewers are concerned. One mustn’t assume that a film has it correct.