Mutiny on the Bounty (1935 film)

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Mutiny on the Bounty

Directed by	Frank Lloyd
Produced by	Irving Thalberg
Written by	Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall (novel) Talbot Jennings Jules Furthman Carey Wilson (screenplay)
Starring	Charles Laughton Clark Gable Franchot Tone Eddie Quillan Herbert Mundin
Music by	Herbert Stothart Nat W. Finston (uncredited) Walter Jurmann and Bronisław Kaper (song, "Love Song of Tahiti") (uncredited)
Cinematography	Arthur Edeson
Editing by	Margaret Booth
Distributed by	Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Release date(s)	November 8, 1935
Running time	132 min.
Country	US
Language	English / Tahitian
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Mutiny on the Bounty is a 1935 film starring Charles Laughton and Clark Gable based on the Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall novel Mutiny on the "Bounty". An anecdotical note about the cast is that David Niven and James Cagney played uncredited cameos in the movie.

The movie chronicles the real-life mutiny aboard the HMAV Bounty lead by Fletcher Christian against the ship's captain, William Bligh. Like the novel, it portrays Captain Bligh as an abusive villain whose cruelty towards the crew and most of the officers lead Christian to mutiny. It contains scenes of the trials of those who had been put off the ship on the launch. It also deals with the aftermath.

The film was one of the biggest hits of its time and remains a classic today and, although its historical accuracy has been seriously questioned (inevitable as it is based in a novel about the facts, not the facts itselves) it is considered by film critics to be the best film inspired in the mutiny. A 1962 three-hours-plus widescreen Technicolor remake, starring Marlon Brando as Fletcher Christian and Trevor Howard as Captain Bligh, became notorious when Brando reportedly practically took over the film even to the point of rewriting and adding scenes for himself, and was a disaster both critically and financially at the time, but has come to be reevaluated by critics over the decades. In 1984, Mel Gibson played Christian opposite Anthony Hopkins as Bligh in a lavish remake called The Bounty. This final version which gives a far more sympathetic view of Bligh is considered to be the closest to historical events.

[edit] Awards and nominations

Mutiny on the Bounty won an Oscar for Best Picture for its producers, Irving Thalberg and Albert Lewin, it also received seven additional nominations:

Best Actor in a Leading Role -
- Clark Gable
- Charles Laughton
- Franchot Tone
Best Director - Frank Lloyd
Best Film Editing - Margaret Booth
Best Music, Score - Nat W. Finston (head of department) and Herbert Stothart ("Love Song of Tahiti" written by Walter Jurmann, uncredited)
Best Writing, Screenplay - Jules Furthman, Talbot Jennings and Carey Wilson
This film is, as of 2006, the last Best Picture winner to win in no other category.

[edit] Historical inaccuracies

The movie does contain a few historical inaccuracies. Captain Bligh was never on board HMS Pandora, nor was he present at the trial of the mutineers who stayed on Tahiti. At the time he was halfway around the world on a second voyage for breadfruit plants. Fletcher Christian's father had died many years before Christian's travels on board the Bounty - the movie shows the elder Christian at the trial. It should be noted though, that the movie was always presented as an adaptation of the Nordhoff and Hall trilogy, which already differed from the actual story of the mutiny.

Bligh is depicted as a brutal, sadistic disciplinarian. Particular episodes include a keel hauling and flogging a dead man. Neither of these happened. Keel hauling was used rarely if at all and had been abandoned long before Bligh's time. Indeed the meticulous record of the Bounty's log reveals that the flogging rate was lower than the average for that time.

However, some historically accurate aspects exist in the film. Clark Gable had to shave off his famous moustache because the sailors in the Royal Navy in the eighteenth century had to be clean-shaven. Gable was reluctant to shave it off, though.

In the final scene of the film Gable gives a rousing speech to his fellow mutineers speaking of creating a perfect society of free men on Pitcairn away from Bligh and the Navy. The reality was very different. Free from the restraints of Naval discipline the mutineers proved incapable of self government. Pitcairn degenerated into a true hell on earth of drunkenness, rape and ultimately murder. Apart from John Adams all the mutineers perished, most of them by violence. Whether the film intended the irony will never be known.