Captain Blood
Starring: Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, Lionel Atwill, Basil Rathbone, Ross Alexander, Guy Kibbee, Henry Stephenson, Robert Barrat, Hobart Cavanaugh, Donald Meek, Jessie Ralph, Forrester Harvey, Frank McGlynn Sr., Holmes Herbert, David Torrence, J. Carrol Naish, Pedro de Cordoba, George Hassell, Harry Cording, Leonard MudieDirector: Michael Curtiz, Joseph Henabery, Lloyd French
Studio: Warner Home Video
MPAA Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dubbed, Subtitled, NTSC
Running Time: 119 minutes
DVD Release: April 19th 2005
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DVD Review
The swashbuckler had been around long before Errol Flynn drew a cutlass, but the Tasmanian-born bit player reinvigorated the genre with his mix of dashing good looks, haughty insolence, and alluring confidence. Adapted from the novel by Rafael Sabatini (who also penned The Sea Hawk), this rousing adventure chronicles the travails of Peter Blood (Flynn), a righteous doctor unjustly sold into slavery for treating the wounds of rebels, a kind of British Dr. Mudd. Sent to a Jamaican plantation where he toils under the brutal whip of Lionel Atwill and seethes with passion for his fair niece (the astonishingly beautiful Olivia de Havilland), he escapes from bondage with his fellow prisoners and becomes the gentleman rogue pirate of the Caribbean. Director Michael Curtiz builds from one set piece to another, including a nimble beachside sword fight with pirate nemesis Basil Rathbone and climaxing with a grand sea battle that belies the film's modest budget. Flynn's bravado and charisma are apparent from his entrance, but once he leaps into action he takes command of the picture, overcoming his still-green dramatic skills with sheer personality. Captain Blood made stars of Flynn and de Havilland and catapulted Curtiz to the top ranks of Warner directors. The three reunited for some of the studio's best-loved adventures: The Charge of the Light Brigade, The Adventures of Robin Hood, and Dodge City. --Sean Axmaker
User Reviews
Captain James Blood is Great - Rating: 5/5
I saw this film yesterday and can say it is really great movie. After got excited with Pirates of The Caribbean movies Captain Blood was in a way even better with old Hollywood style stars featuring Errol Flynn etc.
The miniature fighting scenes are entertaining and b & w format fits like hand in glove.
The history of Pirates is more accurate in Captain Blood than in Disney movies.
The Real Pirates Movie.
[...]
Thank You!
A classic tale of swashbuckling adventure - Rating: 5/5
I really enjoyed this film. While it's a little slow in a few places, overall it's fun and exciting. The tale of Captain Blood follows him from respected doctor to pirate to hero, and the dialogue, a little old fashioned but that's its strength, is great.
I especially enjoyed the swordfight between Flynn and Basil Rathbone. And the sea battle at the end was very fun, too. Great movie.
The Classic Swashbuckler - Rating: 5/5
Captain Blood, based fairly accurately on Rafael Sabatini's classic novel, presents us with the forerunner of today's romantic pirate. Played beautifully by Erroll Flynn, Captain Blood is a brilliant, impetuous doctor cast by fortune into slavery, and from slavery into piracy by fickle fate. Wonderfully dramatic, it is a picture which helped launch Errol Flynn to stardom, and made swashbuckling a hollywood tradition.
a classic of injustice overcome - Rating: 5/5
"You speak treason!"
"Fluently."
Errol Flynn's witty reply comes from "Robin Hood," another of his hugely entertaining swashbucklers, but it also captures the soul of his pirate classic, Captain Blood. A justly enduring adventure, Captain Blood showcases Flynn at his youthful fiery best, as well as superb casting, terrific action sequences (one of film's most compelling sword duels, set on a pirate beach)and Olivia De Havilland--sparks fly, to be sure! But its greatness lies not just in its swordfights and battles, but in its rousing story of injustice overcome against great odds.
The charge of treason against Blood was unreasoning and injust in the extreme; he was merely a doctor treating the wounded of the English civil war. Sentenced without regard to his innocence, he is sent to a hellhole prison island in the Caribbean and must join a daring escape with other nothing-to-lose prisoners.
After the escape, he turns to piracy--ironically, a "brotherhood" of rough-hewn democracy and loyalty at the very opposite end of the spectrum from the society which cruelly imprisoned him over an imagined political crime. As a pirate Captain, Blood is fair and just--again, in stark contrast with the government which so wrongly convicted and enslaved him.
The female interest, Olivia de Havilland, at first heaps scorn on him as a low-life traitor who obviously deserved his fate; this being Hollywood, she eventually sees the error of her assumptions and falls for the dashing pirate.
While all of this sounds like typical adventure, its timelessness rests partly on its subtext of injustice and suffering being defeated not by working through an oppressive, corrupt "system" but through comradeship and an anti-hero idealism: though we be pirates, we hold to a code of honor, and plunder only the wealthy.
There is a mythic quality to this storyline, of course, but there is also a very clear "anti-hero" thread to Blood's rejection of "official" justice and his embrace of a rough-and-ready justice dealt out with the blade of a sword and a broadside of cannons.
This must have resonated especially powerfully with Depression-era audiences.
What was the Depression if not a heaping of undeserved poverty on innocents? The "system," controlled by a self-serving financial and political elite, had failed spectacularly; this film depicts a scenario in which the struggles to escape the imprisonment of poverty and passivity are eventually rewarded--but only after the "crew" adheres to a shared set of just rules: the pirates' code of honor and the election of a strong, idealistic, fair-minded captain.
The great irony at the heart of this film is that true justice lies not with the system but with the pirates, the supposed renegades. Captain Blood achieves his redemption not by docilely awaiting "justice" from his overlords (their verdict was basically an appeals-free death sentence), but by escaping prison and fighting the system of wealth and privilege on the high seas.
It is interesting to speculate what might have become of Captain Blood in the film world of the 1970s, the heyday of anti-heroes. Perhaps Blood would have rejected clemency and remained a pirate. But in the 1930s, the "system" was viewed as capable of recognizing injustice and correcting it. Was this a political subtext or simply story-telling? If you consider the widespread suffering of people during this time, you might find a message not for 1685 but for the era in which the film was made (1935, at the height of the Great Depression). The movie was based on a book, of course, but Hollywood changed book-based stories at will when the ending didn't suit the message they wanted to send ("The Good Earth," by Pearl S. Buck, for example, had a much different ending than the movie of the same name.)
Regardless of any subtexts, we root for Captain Blood precisely because he was wronged, and we find great satisfaction in his contempt for the harsh and faulty judgment of his corrupt government. We cheer when he looses a broadside into his "betters" who so breezily sent him to a death-camp. Great adventure, great story, great message: Blood was forced to overcome injustice by breaking out of the system rather than passively awaiting a justice which would never have come.
lots of fun - Rating: 5/5
This is a lot of fun. Errol and Olivia together for the first time and what a pair! With Errol, she never got the equal role she deserved, and thats a shame. Their chemistry is electric.And both of them could have done one hell of a drama together, but they never got the chance. This movie is action filled, and unlike movies today, not drawn out.
