Captain Blood (1935)

In his first starring role, Errol Flynn is what we now would call, a "natural". He is backed up by a great cast, a great score and wonderful direction. And the film works because the role Errol Flynn plays is in a way a mirror of himself (please read his autobiography). He portrays only the best sides of the male character: a sense of justice, humour, and treating the ladies with the respect they deserve. Nobody could do it better. And Errol Flynn did it for many years after this film. Often people think of mr Flynn as only a swashbuckler. I think his greatest moments are the electric scenes with the villains, were he in a very understated and believable manner, takes a stand for justice and equality. Go watch all his movies. Go buy them. They are truly timeless classics of our movie heritage.

Fmovies: I'm not that big on pirate movies and I thought this might be overrated.....but I was wrong. This is good stuff and I wonder if a more realistic pirate movie has ever been made.

This was Errol Flynn's first starring role and it sure got him off to a flying start. Few actors have ever played the "dashing hero" as well as Flynn. Despite being almost "worship idol" status by women, he is still comes across as a "man's man," and that all started with this film.

What I liked best about this was that the story stood out more than the action or the romance. Many times classic films overdid the latter, producing lulls in what was considered an adventure story. That's not the case here. It also isn't the typical clichéd pirate film in which the captain is seen with an eye patch and a parrot on his shoulder.

This is nothing fancy, just a just solid story.....period, which is probably why it holds up so well over 70 years later!

It's Flynn's first big picture and it brings him together with Olivia DeHavilland, Michael Curtiz, and Erich Wolfgang Korngold. It's not their best movie together but it's a terrific introduction to the parts these personalities were to play in swashbucklers.

Flynn is brash and cocky. (He didn't change much until he began to physically deteriorate later in life.) He projects his emotions the way a traffic light projects directions, with utter simplicity. There's never a moment when we doubt we know what he's thinking. He looks extremely handsome too (he was 26) without being in the least effete.

Olivia De Havilland is his perfect counterpart. She was never a raving beauty, but she's extremely feminine. She has a wide face with huge eyes, a dazzling smile, and a tinkling laugh. Where Flynn is adventurous she is cautious, thoughtful, often puzzled about her loyalties, and she holds things back, while Flynn shouts things out.

The rest of the cast is filled with familiar faces from the 30s -- J. Carol Naish, Guy Kibbee, Lionel Atwill -- and they do their jobs well.

It's a sound-stage bound movie with a lot of model work, some of it clumsy but still effective. A neatly done set is a tribute to the production designer. The banana plants grow neatly in picturesque places and the papier-mache palms beat the real thing. Natural locations are often cluttered with vegetation, but these jungles and beaches are flawless. They don't look like real locations. They look like what you wish real locations looked like.

This is Erich Wolfgang Korngold's first score for a movie. (He'd previously adapted Mendelsohn for an earlier one.) It's often claimed that Hollywood composers were child prodigies but in Korngold's case it's not an exaggeration. He was studying piano and music theory at five, conducted his own cantata (for Gustav Mahler) at nine, and had his first work published at thirteen. He was a prolific composer too -- violin concertos, two operas -- by the time he was in his mid-thirties. Max Reinhardt sent him to Hollywood to write a few scores, of which this was one. It was thrown into his lap and he had to write it almost overnight. There was simply not enough time to do it all, so he stole a little from Liszt, the scene in which the Spanish pirates are looting the town. He returned to Europe to continue his career but, well, the continent by that time was no place for a guy named Korngold, genius or not. So he returned to Hollywood until after the war when he was able to go back to Europe and renew his composing.

I don't mean to take up too much space dealing with Korngold, but the fact is that Flynn's early movies would just not be the same with anyone else. Korngold wrote music the way Flynn acted -- full of dash and bombast -- and some of it was stunningly lyrical. (The simple love song in "The Sea Hawk" has a melodic progression that defies prediction.) It's hardly worth noting that the name of this talented musician has been parodied elsewhere as "Wolfgang von Korngold" by another reviewer, Howydymax, whose penetrating insights into film fare I have usually admired and sometimes stolen from. Curtiz's direction had the same slam-bang quality as the composer's. Absolutely nothing artsy about it, a straightforward story.

There are some weaknesses in the script. When I first saw it, finally, on TV, I'd been waiting for a chance for years and was frustrated because there didn'

Captain Blood fmovies. I have always wanted to see this film and so I recently purchased the Errol Flynn Signature Collection from Warner Bros. and promptly watched this title. This could easily be considered the greatest pirate movie ever made and by far the most realistic. Being a film student I watched it with a critical eye but at the same time found myself engaged in the excitement and all of the swashbuckling spectacle that WAS the film. Errol Flynn's breakout performance could easily rival his appearance as Robin Hood 3 years later, and Basil Rathbone is his typically evil self. The swordplay is spectacular, the Korngold's score is breathtaking, and the film is not only well made but (after 70 years) easily as entertaining (if not more) as the recent Pirates of the Caribbean. Highly recommended viewing for viewers of all ages.

Flynn's first starring role in Hollywood! This is a lavish, knock-you-silly gorgeous production with a solid, book-based plot, packed with action, salt water, swordplay AND hordes of pirates "celebrating in pirate fashion" (!). Flynn and de Havilland spark as they spar in the best love-hate mode, and this time, when she inadvisedly condescends to him in his slavery, his pride is as involved as hers. Suave, deadly French pirate captain Rathbone's betrayal of Flynn makes their thrilling, fated-from-the-start duel very satisfying indeed. The icing on the cake -- Flynn at his slim, youthful, sexy freshest, so beautiful he breaks your heart!

Talk about taking one long chance. The original star of Captain Blood was to be Robert Donat. But health reasons as they did often in Donat's career prevented him from doing this film. So Jack Warner gave the lead in this film to a contract player who had done a couple of bit parts in some B films and had done a lead in an Australian production of the Mutiny on the Bounty story.

Jack Warner not only created a star in Errol Flynn, but also created a new screen team in co-starring him with Olivia DeHavilland who hadn't done that much herself at Warner Brothers up to that time. Individually and together they were a vibrant and charismatic screen team and did eight films for the Brothers Warner.

They were so successful that they resented the typecasting. DeHavilland fought against it far more successfully than Flynn did. As legend has come down to us, Errol Flynn had other pursuits.

The story is that Doctor Peter Blood made a house call on a wounded rebel during the Monmouth rebellion in 1685 against James II. That house call got him a one way ticket to slavery on the island of Jamaica along with many other of the rebels. Olivia DeHavilland the niece of Lionel Atwill, the wealthiest man on Jamaica buys Flynn on a whim. An attack by Spanish pirates offers an opportunity for escape and Flynn and the rest of the rebels become pirates themselves.

Jack Warner provided his two unknowns with a good cast of supporting players. Basil Rathbone as Levasseur, Flynn's pirate rival, crew members Ross Alexander, Guy Kibbee, and Frank McGlyn, Sr., Henry Stephenson as the sympathetic Lord Willoughby, but most of all Lionel Atwill.

Atwill played many a screen villain, but I'm not sure he was ever better as the pompous blundering oaf Colonel Bishop. My favorite scene in Captain Blood has always been when after Flynn routs the Spanish pirate attack on Port Royal by seizing the pirate ship. When Atwill comes on board to thank those who turned the tables on the pirates he gets quite a reception. The dialog in this scene and the final result of this oaf being tossed into the harbor is priceless.

Love and romance, pirate battles, and a dueling scene between Flynn and Rathbone that was only topped by Rathbone and Flynn again in Robin Hood. It's all here and all for your entertainment for generations to come.