#1962 mutiny on the bounty trial
It’s annoying because he hasn’t learned his lesson in any way, and even at the end, during the trial of the surviving mutineers (not including Christian) Bligh still escapes any real retribution aside from a dressing down by the Naval court. He makes a miraculous escape, leaving the shackled seamen to die. He captures a few of them, shackles them in Pandora‘s brig, and then runs the ship aground on the Great Barrier Reef. The second half becomes a Moby Dick knockoff, with Bligh inexplicably making it back to land, securing himself another ship, the Pandora, and pursuing the mutineers across the ocean. Unfortunately, that’s only about halfway through the film.
#1962 mutiny on the bounty free
When it happens, it’s well deserved – he’s cast off the ship after a daring rescue effort of some shackled seamen by Christian, who then delivers an inspiring speech about starting a wonderful new society on Pitcairn’s Island free from the oppressive villainy represented by Bligh.Ĭlark Gable and Charles Laughton in Mutiny on the Bounty (1935) Sadly, like Titanic, you know how the story ends, so you know that no matter how villainous Bligh’s acts become, he won’t get his comeuppance until much later in the film. You wait for Bligh to do something unreasonably evil, like send a man up to the crow’s nest for laughing out of line, and once that happens you yawn and check your watch while Christian pauses to frown about the injustice before taking some mild action. Gable’s Christian is such a righteous hero that the film’s conflict becomes tiresome very quickly. Christian winces, but stands by his captain’s wish. This doesn’t deter Bligh, who insists that the man be flogged anyway, and that his crew watch and heed the example. Sometime between being tied up and reaching the Bounty, apparently a five minute journey, the seaman has died. Towards the start of the film, a seaman (giggle now and get over it, we’ll be using this one a lot) accused of striking a superior (presumably Bligh) is tied to a post and sailed out beside the Bounty, which hasn’t even left port.
The Bounty of 1935 is a cookie-cutter adventure film, where we’re immediately introduced to an heroic people’s champion in Christian, and a ridiculously overblown villain in Bligh.īligh’s villainy knows no bounds – even death is no hiding place from a flogging. It’s also interesting that the story hasn’t been filmed since the 80s, and I think the reason for this is that the filmmaking climate and atmosphere hasn’t changed sufficiently for such a film to be made.
It’s interesting that Hollywood took this very British story of resentment, shame, defiance and triumph over adversity (for better or worse) and turned it into such a demo unit for film itself in each major era of the medium. How historically accurate the films are in portraying the events we can never know for certain, but we can eventually decide which one will transplant those true events in the minds of the public as Titanic seems to have done for that event, judging by the recent Twitter fiasco. I thought it’d be interesting to discover how differently each film treated the subject matter, and how reflective of their respective eras each film would be.
Bligh and his faithful are set adrift near Tonga and miraculously survive the journey to Batavia, eventually making it back to England, while Christian and some of his fellow mutineers establish a society on the uninhabited Pitcairn Island. We’re all familiar with the story: while on a voyage from Great Britain to Tahiti to collect breadfruit for slaves in the West Indies, Lieutenant William Bligh loses control of his ship, the Bounty, to his first mate Fletcher Christian and a discontented crew. Recently, a friend and I decided it’d be fun to watch a triple shot of the three major Hollywood films of the Bounty story, starting with 1935’s Mutiny on the Bounty with Clark Gable as Fletcher Christian and Charles Laughton as William Bligh, then 1962’s Mutiny on the Bounty with Marlon Brando as Christian and Trevor Howard as Bligh, and finally The Bounty, with Mel Gibson as Christian and Anthony Hopkins as Bligh.
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