According to the opening script, this movie is based on actual events which changed the approach to mutiny in the English navy henceforth, and with a quick nod to nationalism. I don't really know the veracity of that claim, I assume it's loosely based on a like event, but I do know that whatever the reality of the event, the filmmakers took great liberties on their imagining of it.
By great liberties, I mean that its already ham-handed acting, relatively unsympathetic characters, and maintained focus on Clark Gable's broad shoulders and slightly opened shirt become nothing to the completely unreal and vaguely racist look at Tahiti, and all of the maudlin "drama" that follows afterwards. This movie is a movie of three images, Charles Laughton being small and mean as Charles Laughton can do well, Clark Gable being heroistic and empathetic, and terribly scoffable images of the virgin native in her softly lit love closeup... continuously.
Which is a shame because some of the more interesting imagery and story lines get lost behind such demeaning narrative. There are actually some quite effective feelings of sea-sickness and confinement, or freedom and productivity, as per its use, on the ship, and the overall theme of the story of authoritarian control is pretty gripping. It just loses itself in stardom and moonshine, a story people go for for the actors, not the story or the meaning, and a lot of underhanded tricky things slips in the midst. It's kind of a disgusting movie, really.
It's a Classics-classic. So old it's good, hailing back to the days when By Golly! people knew how to make movies. And for what it's worth it will stay that way for a while. It's just not very good.
--PolarisDiB
By great liberties, I mean that its already ham-handed acting, relatively unsympathetic characters, and maintained focus on Clark Gable's broad shoulders and slightly opened shirt become nothing to the completely unreal and vaguely racist look at Tahiti, and all of the maudlin "drama" that follows afterwards. This movie is a movie of three images, Charles Laughton being small and mean as Charles Laughton can do well, Clark Gable being heroistic and empathetic, and terribly scoffable images of the virgin native in her softly lit love closeup... continuously.
Which is a shame because some of the more interesting imagery and story lines get lost behind such demeaning narrative. There are actually some quite effective feelings of sea-sickness and confinement, or freedom and productivity, as per its use, on the ship, and the overall theme of the story of authoritarian control is pretty gripping. It just loses itself in stardom and moonshine, a story people go for for the actors, not the story or the meaning, and a lot of underhanded tricky things slips in the midst. It's kind of a disgusting movie, really.
It's a Classics-classic. So old it's good, hailing back to the days when By Golly! people knew how to make movies. And for what it's worth it will stay that way for a while. It's just not very good.
--PolarisDiB