What makes a Swashbuckler swash?

[petermorwood]

The various home-burned DVDs of movies saved from TV have been mostly transferred from unlabelled jewel cases (which might contain a CD, a DVD, a data/installation disk or just be empty) to proper library cases. Once they've got proper labels, they'll be a lot easier to find. Some of the tidying has produced a "why did I save this?" reaction - at least they're mostly RWs, so can be RW'en - but every now and then there's a "Wow, so there it is!" and one of those reactions was prompted by finding the Errol Flynn Captain Blood. I thought I'd loaned it to someone and forgotten who; turns out I'd put it somewhere safe and forgotten where.

I caught this on TCM more than four years ago, and was delighted to find incidents and lines of dialogue I didn't remember from Sunday afternoons on BBC1; it turns out the Beeb was showing a trimmed re-release, and the original (this one) is about 20 minutes longer, running almost exactly two hours. According to IMDb, this is the original running time; I suspect those 20 minutes were cut from the re-release to make room for commercials in a two-hour TV slot, and the BBC were simply showing the cut they had available.

Captain Blood is a bit of a curiosity; it's one of the great cinematic swashbucklers, and yet the swashbuckling is surprisingly understated. The actual "piratical" part of the drama doesn't begin until the 45th minute and I think, though haven't checked, that the very word pirate isn't used until that same point.

In addition, and despite its fame in the swashbuckling genre, there's only one major swordfight in the entire film, short, but perfect, when Blood (Flynn) confronts Levasseur (Basil Rathbone) on a rocky Caribbean shore. There are no other plot-point duels at all, and by comparison with modern examples, very little in the way of on-screen action of any sort except for the final battle between Blood's Arabella and the French warships bombarding Port Royal. Even a major plot development like Blood's advancement from runaway slave to famous buccaneer takes place mostly in montage and title-card.

This probably reflects the movie's smallish budget; a nitpicker (like me) can see where quite a lot of the intercut and back-projected ship-to-ship footage was lifted from other movies - The Sea Hawk of 1924 is supposedly one of them, but I'm sure I saw HMS Victory or a similar Napoleonic three-decker at least twice.

None of this detracts from Captain Blood's quality as a rattling good yarn. Yes, it may move a bit slowly for modern tastes (though it's by no means as leisurely as some) but since there's no mass of special effects or CGI for any lack of plot to hide behind, the film has to stand or fall on its story - and it stands remarkably well.

Comments

[jaxomsride.livejournal.com]

Have you heard there may be a remake?

I loved all the Errol Flynn Swashbuckling movies and Burt Lancaster's too.

Was Captain Blood the one where he slides down the sail using his dagger?

[petermorwood.livejournal.com]

I had indeed heard about the remake; hardly surprising, given the current popularity of pirate stuff. The 1935 Flynn version was itself a remake - the first Captain Blood film was in 1924! - and there've been a couple of other movies using the character since then. While none are quite as good as the first - (Captain Blood: His Odyssey - it's in Gutenberg) Rafael Sabatini wrote two two more short-story collections about him. While in Gutenberg, take a look at the "Captain Sharkey" stories in The Green Flag by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle; they have a very different view of pirates and piracy.

Let's just hope this latest one gets done right. I don't want to see another Cutthroat Island; that fiasco killed anything to do with pirates stone dead until Pirates of the Caribbean came out.

According to Swordsmen of the Screen by Jeffrey Richards (required reading for lovers of cinema swashbuckling) that sail-sliding stunt first appeared in The Black Pirate (1926) and was performed by Douglas Fairbanks Senior. Here's how it was done: the sail was pre-slit, the dagger-hilt was fixed to a wire rig, and Doug held on tight... The stunt was used again, by Errol Flynn in Against All Flags (1952) and Burt Lancaster in The Crimson Pirate (also 1952) - and I've a vague memory of having seen it in a more modern movie as well, though I can't remember which one.

I'm sure this has been said before, but the Star Wars movies, and especially the very first one, aren't really science fiction films at all; they're swashbucklers in space-opera makeup...

[jaxomsride.livejournal.com]

Ah the sail slitting was in one of the PotC films. I remember Lancaster did it in Crimson Pirate (my favourite pirate movie)but I couldn't remember which one Errol did it in.

I agree about the Star Wars movies too!