A red letter day at TCM -three Errol Flynn movies in one day. A geed reason to wake up early - Captain Blood at 0615. A great way to start the day.
Flynn was still an unknown when he got the Captain Blood role. He only got it, so the story goes, because the original actor cast for the leading role, Robert Donat, didn't show up for shooting when the movie was set to start filming. This was typical of Donat, who had a history of quirky, unpredictable actions like that (it wasn't the only time he failed to appear after being cast in a role), which he blames on bad health. Warner Brothers decided to take a big risk, casting two unknowns - Flynn and Olivia DeHavilland - in the lead roles of a film with a $1 million budget, which was big bucks in 1935. DeHavilland, had previously had only bit parts in three other 1935 films, and was only 19 at the time.
What is surprising is, when watched a couple of times, just how good a movie Captain Blood is. The cinematography and film editing is outstanding. The sea battles were a mix of small model shots, and clever editing of live action scenes from the 1924 silent classic The Sea Hawk. For a new actor, Flynn showed admirable skill, and he and Olivia had a genuine screen rapport that is obvious. Basil Rathbone, though he thought he was miscast as French pirate, provided what became almost a stereotypical movie pirate role. It would be a while before Flynn really got his fencing skills up to par, though, and rathbone is obviously better at it, though he loses the duel to Errol in the end.
For most Errol fans, Captain Blood was the first movie that made us devoted Flynn fans. "Family Classics" on Sunday afternoon, or the late movies on Saturday night TV. Great stuff.
Oh, final note. This was the first film scored by Erich Wolfgang Korngold. Part of the German exodus to Hollywood in the late 1930s following the rise of the Nazis to power, Korngold fled Austria in 1938 just ahead of the German annexation. A gifted classical composer in Europe, he supported himself writing movie scores for most of the rest of his career. Captain Blood was his first Hollywood gig (prior to him emigrating, though it is also said he worked on another film in 1934); in all, he wrote the scores for seven Flynn movies (which no doubt added much to the movies). At the end of World War II, he attempted to get out of the movie business and back into classical composing, but he found that the music world had "left him behind". After a heart attack in 1947, he retired and lived quitely until his death in 1957.
No comments:
Post a Comment