Thursday, January 20, 2011

Avast me hearties! - "Mutiny on the Bounty" (1935)


Mat here. We were in the mood for some swashbuckling, and Mutiny on the Bounty fit the bill. This historical drama on the high seas retells the rebellion by the crew of the HMS Bounty, led by Fletcher Christian (Clark Gable), against the tyrannical Captain Bligh (Charles Laughton).

The film opens with a bunch of average guys being brutally press-ganged into the Navy to serve on Bligh's latest voyage. Things go from bad to worse as Bligh cruelly punishes any misdemeanours with the cat o' nine tails, a freezing stint in the crow's nest or a brutal keel-hauling.


Fletcher finally reaches breaking point and wrests control of the ship, dumping Bligh and his loyalists into a longboat and setting sail for some downtime in Tahiti.
Amazingly, Bligh makes it back to England and then heads back for his mutinous crew.

One of the mutineers ends up on Bligh's boat and is taken to England for court martial. The film ends with his trial, and covers some of the changes to nautical practice that were set in place to ensure the sailors' treatment that resulted in mutiny wouldn't happen again.


Despite being a very old film, Mutiny on the Bounty had a lot of modern sensibilities. The action was fast-paced and the editing brisk. The pacing is a little uneven once the men get to Tahiti as we jump forward several years with little appreciation of the time passing.
The rivalry between Bligh and Fletcher was more than acting as the two actors reportedly despised each other. Gable was a well-known homophobe and Laughton was openly gay, even bringing along his buff boyfriend to their island location shoot as his 'personal masseur'.

Rather than being based strictly on the real events, Mutiny on the Bounty was based on the novel of the same name by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall. Thus there are some historical inaccuracies (such as Bligh is present at the court martial, or several men being killed in the mutiny) that follow the story of the novel rather than recorded history.


Mutiny on the Bounty was an enjoyable, if at times brutal (well, for the 30's) adventure, but if I was casting around for a fun swashbuckling movie to watch on a Saturday afternoon, I'd pick Treasure Island over this!

Danielle gave it 67/100 and I gave it 70/100 when I scored it quickly straight after we watched it and then 64/100 once I’d had time to reflect and score properly! So overall we'll say we agree and both gave it 67/100!

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Slow and steady wins the Oscar - "Driving Miss Daisy" (1989)


This was not an easy one to get Mat to watch – it definitely screams ‘chick flick’ and this is exacerbated by the fact that for some completely bizarre reason his high school teachers felt that this was appropriate and entertaining fare for the the 7-11 boys while the year 12s had their muck up days. Every year for 5 years Mat was herded into a smelly gymnasium with 1000 other equally unimpressed pubescent boys to watch Miss Daisy and Hoke meander there way across the US and the decades. So you can imagine how thrilled he was when this came out of the hat!

But despite some fairly negative associations, he actually enjoyed this Best Picture Winner and rated it 69. I gave it 79 and our houseguest and guest reviewer, Gina, gave it 80.

This is a sweet and deceptively simple story that reflects the social change whipping through the south in the mid-twentieth century. The story follows the 25 year relationship between a stubborn Southern Jew and her African-American driver, a relationship that changes both of them and reflects the growing social changes in the South and the confusion many people must have felt as old divides and class distinctions became taboo.

I love Jessica Tandy, I should say that now and I’m so impressed she won the Best Actress Oscar for this role (making her the oldest winner at 81 years old). Her performance is rich, subtle, never clichéd and she lends depth and charm to a rather cantankerous old woman so stuck in her ways she’d fire a man over a tin of salmon rather than have his presence disturb her status quo.

Morgan Freeman plays a wonderful character; the proverbial stream wearing down Miss Daisy’s stone. He lends a grace and dignity to the role that you feel Hoke would have had to possess to survive for a quarter of a century!

This is so different to many of the winners we’ve watched so far, it’s quiet and unassuming. The humour is soft and real, the dialogue true to life and witty and the direction and score are beautiful additions while never over powering the scene or the flow. It’s not a big story – there are no wars or battlefields or great and famous heroes or struggles, just two people and the difference they made to each others lives. This makes the characters and the story eminently relatable despite the period setting (and our lack of Southern Jewish or African-American blood) and I think a worthy winner of the Best Picture Oscar.

Tuesday, January 4, 2011

"From Here to Eternity" (1953) - Dirty soldiers 1950s style!


This is another classic we’d been looking forward to watching where overall the background and gossip surrounding production were more interesting than the film itself.

First off, just so you know, the iconic scene on the beach between Deborah Kerr and Burt Lancaster that has been emulated by everyone from Madonna (in her ‘Cherish’ video) to Bolle sunglasses is really not that integral to the plot. Those guys aren’t even the main protagonists; they’re more of a heavily edited side story.

The main action is based on the novel by James Jones and takes place in Hawaii just before the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbour. We follows the indomitable Montgomery Clift’s character as he is bullied into boxing at his new army posting and an array of side characters that demonstrate a darker side to the US Army than the 1950s audience would have been used to.

The acting is quite compelling and the parts of the story that actually made it to the big screen are interesting but I would have really liked to seen the less-censored version! To get it past the Army (and ensure their help in production) key locations, events and outcomes had to be altered (e.g., changing a brothel to a nightclub and showing the broken bureaucracy of the Army higher ups being addressed and amended). But in true classic fashion, the best drama was all going on behind the scenes…

Montgomery Clift was his usual intense and method self on set, learning to play the bugle and move like a boxer and actually getting drunk for scenes that required his character to be drunk( although given that he was a lifelong alcoholic – that may not have been purely for the part!)

Despite the studio having severe reservations about the non-soldier ‘probably homosexual’ actor playing this role, he delivers a really honest and riveting performance. In another casting controversy, this is supposedly also the movie that Frank Sinatra got a little ‘wink wink nudge nudge/offer they couldn’t refuse’ help to land the part of the irascible 'only my friends can call me a wop' Private Maggio (as fictionalised in ‘The Godfather’).

Whatever the politics that went into this film getting made, we’re glad it did, it was entertaining, if a little too long and scored respectably for such a sanitised story. I gave it 59 and Mat scored it 61. (I may have taken off points for the film’s role in popularising Hawaiian shirts!)