Mutiny On The Bounty (1935/Warner Blu-ray)
Picture:
B Sound: C+ Extras: B- Film: B
Some
stories are so good that they have spawned several good films. In the case of Mutiny On The Bounty, there is the 1962 Marlon Brando film, 1984
Anthony Hopkins/Mel Gibson film and the fact that the story of Captain Bligh
and Mr. Fletcher Christian battling on a big ship in the middle of nowhere
remains intriguing and true is still known today. However, the genesis of this tale becoming a
key piece of the culture, pop and otherwise, comes from the 1935 MGM film with Charles
Laughton giving an immortal and much-imitated performance as Bligh and an on
the rise Clark Gable as Christian a year after his breakthrough hit It Happened One Night the year before.
This film
was bound to be a hit and it was, making Gable one of the biggest stars at the
biggest studio in Hollywood,
while the already respectable and extremely talented Laughton only cemented his
reputation as one of the all around best in the business. An expensive film for its time, it would be
the biggest hit for its director, Frank Lloyd, whose career included over 130
feature films!
On its 75th
Anniversary, the film endures and holds up very well despite the underrated
remakes and changes in filmmaking, it is a very tight, smart film with an
efficient use of narrative economy (no moment in plotting is wasted) and it is
a very rich, watchable 132 minutes throughout.
Sure, you can see some of the sets and the acting style is of its time,
but this was a great way to make films that moved and worked and it is very
fair to say this has more energy than most productions I have seen of
late. That is why it is a classic of its
time and of all time, though it deserves a new, wider audience to discover it
and hopefully this Blu-ray will help make that possible.
Besides
Franchot Tone (a big star of MGM at the time who had a long, enduring acting
career), there are a good share of actors of the time that have been forgotten
in key roles including Donald Crisp, Eddie Quillan, Henry Stephenson, Spring
Byington, David Torrence, DeWitt Jennings, Vernon Downing and Mamo Clark whose
work helped make this a hit, but so many hits since, time and the fall of the
old MGM has caused their work and their names to be lost in the shuffle. Seeing their work in High Definition shows
particularly how strong their work was and I hope we see more early sound films
make it to Blu-ray ASAP.
But then
we have the two big stars against each other on the big screen. Laughton’s work in inarguable, but you have
to give Gable credit. Here he is a young
actor and some may have accused him of coasting on his looks and popularity,
only getting respect towards the end of his career. He really holds his own against Laughton, who
is not holding back anything in any way here and Gable was very young at
34. He really could act and proves it
here. Mutiny On The Bounty is one of the most important films of the
1930s and seeing it again years later looking and sounding better than most
could have ever imagined, you can see why.
It is the kind of gem the classical Hollywood Studio System could
produce all the time because the moguls running the studios cared and this
epitomizes the results.
If you
have never seen the film before, see it on Blu-ray and be impressed.
The 1080p
1.33 X 1 digital black and white High Definition image is now one of the few
films of the 1930s to make the Blu-ray format so far, but it looks really good
for its age with good detail for its age and Warner has cleaned up the film
without ruining it. Video Black and
Video White work, while the grain is here in a limited amount without being
overabundant. Arthur Edeson was the
credited Director of Photography, but this was epic enough a production that
Charles G. Clarke and Sidney Wagner also worked on the film. Along with Babes In Toyland (aka March
Of The Wooden Soldiers with Laurel & Hardy, reviewed on Blu-ray
elsewhere on this site), you can see MGM was determined to make the biggest and
best productions of the time and when they decided to spend the money, it was
all over the screen. The DTS-HD MA
(Master Audio) lossless 1.0 track is fine for an early sound film of its age,
which was also a monophonic release, with Herbert Stothart’s score sounding
just fine.
Extras include
a 1935 short Pitcairn Island Today,
Academy Awards Newsreel, 32-page DigiBook with rare stills, promo materials and
text information and trailers for this and the 1962 versions of the tale on
film from MGM. I just wish Warner had
included an HD version of the Looney Tunes spoof Mutiny On The Bunny, though an audio commentary would have been
nice too. You can read more about the
1962 version at this link:
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/4786/Mutiny+On+The+Bounty+(1962/HD-DV
- Nicholas Sheffo
