Captain Blood marked the beginning of the golden age of Swashbucklers (yes, every genre has an era known as its golden age; just go with it). Before it, the complications in recording sound while filming the movement inherent in the genre made these films impractical. Sure, a silent Douglas Fairbanks could leap off a mast, but sound swashbuckling heroes had to settle for a lot of talking and just a little fencing in a confined space. Pseudo-Swashbucklers like The Scarlet Pimpernel or my own listed The Count of Monte Cristo contained more sitting than acts of daring-do. With Captain Blood, that changed, though it is a slower paced movie than most people remember.
It was a film of firsts. It was the first “talkie” based on a novel by Rafael Sabatini. It was the first film with a score by Erich Wolfgang Korngold, who is arguably the greatest composer to ever work in Hollywood. It was Errol Flynn’s first starring role, a part he picked up only after Robert Donat backed out due to poor health. It boasts both the first pairing of Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland (they would have seven more) as well as the first swordfight between Flynn and Basil Rathbone (they would meet three years later in one of the great filmed swordfights in the finale of The Adventures of Robin Hood). It was also the first Swashbuckler for director Michael Curtiz and his first film with Flynn and de Havilland. There would be many more.
It was Curtiz who made Captain Blood more than a B pirate romp. He rarely receives the credit he deserves because he worked in the studio system. More independent directors are lauded over for expressing their personal artistic vision without considering their actual skill to direct. No one could get a better performance from an actor, choose the proper actor for a role (and he did fight for actors when he knew he was right), and create a better shot, than Michael Curtiz. No director has ever been as versatile. He is responsible for White Christmas, Life with Father, Mildred Pierce, Casablanca, Yankee Doodle Dandy, Santa Fe Trail, and The Adventures of Robin Hood. Musicals, melodrama, Film Noir, Comedy, romance, Swashbucklers, he was an expert in every genre. For Captain Blood, his most important contribution was working with Errol Flynn. Flynn was uncertain of himself when the film began; he had yet to develop his easy manor with stylized dialog. Curtiz gave him the confidence that would allow him to become a genre star, and then re-shot the scenes where Flynn had been less-assured. Curtiz’s style filled the movie. He was part of the German expressionist movement and he put that to use. The look of the early scenes, in the rebel’s house and in the courtroom, could have been pulled out of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Rooms are overlarge with a lack of decoration. Walls seem to tilt in unexpected angles. It is odd to watch, and quite effective. The strangest scene in the movie, and one of the best, has slaves pushing round a large wheel. Why? It doesn’t appear to do anything, at least nothing the audience can detect. It is just a representation of enslavement and is reminiscent of the clocks from Metropolis.
The plot of Captain Blood plays out less like a single story and more like a series of episodes. Part 1: good Dr. Blood goes to the medical aid of a rebel, is arrested, and sentenced to a life of slavery. Part 2: Blood lives life as a slave at Port Royal, where he uses a whining governor and two clownish doctors to plot an escape, but ends up stealing a Spanish war ship. Part 3: The slaves become rollicking pirates. Part 4: Blood makes an alliance with Capt. Levasseur, an “evil” French pirate. Part 5: Romance and sexual tensions on the high seas as Blood and Arabella Bishop (Olivia de Havilland) mix their love with pride. Part 6: Political changes turn the pirates into heroes. The film changes tone dramatically with each part; some are in deadly earnest while others are nearer to comedy.
Captain Blood holds up as well as most golden age Swashbucklers to changing times, with a few exceptions, primarily involving bold text emblazoned on the screen. I’m sure the viewer wasn’t supposed to laugh when the words “Blood…Blood…Blood” popped up, but it reads like a comic. Even more amusing is terminology used to depict the pirates: we are told that the pirate city is “where easy money consorted with easy virtue” and that Captain Levasseur is a “hard fighting, hard-gaming French rascal.” Consorted? Easy Virtue? A rascal? I would love to hear an evening news cast describe a mass murderer as a rascal, perhaps one in search of easy virtue.
Is it a good film? Yes. But as I mentioned, it is a film of firsts and it feels like it. Everything is there to make a great movie, but none if it quite manages it. Flynn pulls off the cocky champion, but he would do it far better in The Adventures of Robin Hood and The Seahawk. Korngold’s score is top notch by Hollywood standards, but with only a few weeks to prepare it, it does not reach the heights of those he wrote a few years later. Rathbone’s antagonist pirate is entertaining for the small part he plays in the film, but is a shadow of his later villains. Of course he’s not helped by having to use a comical French accent. The clowns and jokes that are a hallmark of Swashbucklers are all there, but the bumbling doctors and the churchman who recites Bible verses after each attack make me wince more than laugh. These would also be done better in later films. Plus the studio hadn’t quite got down the pacing of an adventure yarn or the skill to disguise obviously fake backdrops. It is hard to beat the climatic sea battle, which is surprising as Curtiz had no full sized ships and only one deck set to work with. He had a few small ship models and footage from the silent versions of Captain Blood and The Seahawk to reuse, and yet with some smoke and a huge cast of pirate extras, Curtiz makes it real. Captain Blood is a good film, but is more important as the basis for the films to follow.
The Production Code
The filmmakers of the ‘30s and 40s were masters of sneaking in scenes or concepts that the censors would have blocked, had they recognized what was on the screen. With Captain Blood, the object of such attention was androgynous Jeremy Pitt. How should we take such lines as Col. Bishop asking what is between Pitt and Blood, or Pitt’s statement that he has been watching it go “in and out, in and out”? Pitt’s whipping adds in a touch of B&D. It’s all implication, which is how it was done then, and makes the film just a little more fun.