At Warner Brothers, Michael Curtiz, Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, Erich Wolfgang Korngold et al., reset the Douglas Fairbanks silent swashbuckling standard for the sound era with CAPTAIN BLOOD/’35. Refreshingly rough & ready, follow ups would incrementally sacrifice spontaneity & sense of discovery for ever increasing technical finish & neater dramatic integration. But as a whole, the series set the bar extremely high. Too high for most to compete. Certainly too high for this British striver from Alexander Korda’s British outfit, led by fading Hollywood director William K. Howard* (with favored lenser James Wong Howe in surprising low-contrast form) unable to get a rhythm going between set ups careful to hide an inadequate budget; unhelped by a stop-and-start script prone to speechifying; and a cast which looks better on paper than on screen. A tale of the Spanish Armada, high seas piracy, and plucky British perseverance, it’s similar to Warners infinitely superior THE SEA HAWK/’40. Flora Robson plays Queen Elizabeth in both, much improved in the later pic. Here, even with Laurence Olivier, Leslie Banks & Raymond Massey, only Vivien Leigh (spectacularly lovely and able to act) bests Warners’ counterpart Brenda Marshall in the love interest spot. Ultimately, this one hangs fire and is mainly worth a look as testament to Hollywood’s superiority in the field at the time.
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/DOUBLE-BILL: *Howard, near the front of the directing pack thru the mid-‘30s, slips noticeably here, and never recovered after his Stateside return. While Olivier, still uncomfortable on camera (compare to James Mason in a small role), found his film legs working in Hollywood with William Wyler cracking the whip on WUTHERING HEIGHTS/’39. Olivier knew it, too, asking Wyler to direct his HENRY V/’44, then giving his best ever for Wyler in CARRIE/’52.
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