Captain Blood (1935)

That was an excellent one.

i know i wasted 90 mins of my life.

Amazing worth wacthing. So good. Biased but well made with many good points.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

What's not to like about this movie?It has swash-buckling action. It has a dashing hero (played magnificently by Errol Flynn). It has a beautiful damsel (an early role for Olivia de Havilland) who eventually finds herself in distress and is then rescued by the aforementioned hero. It has some colourful villains (including a pirate delightfully played by Basil Rathbone). It has a story in which good wins, love is triumphant, and wrongs are righted. Add to that a stirring musical score by the great Erich Wolfgang Korngold and you have a movie that never fails to entertain and has robustly withstood the test of time.It's fun from beginning to end and I look forward to adding this movie to my own personal library.Let's hope that no studio gets the daft idea to re-make this cinematic gem. It's a strong candidate for the perfect movie and there's nothing in it that needs improvement.

As a preview for "The Adventures of Robin Hood" (1938) and "The Sea Hawk" (1940), this Errol Flynn actioner is a pretty good one. It's the movie that put the celebrated actor on the map so to speak, and he makes the best of it as the leader of a rag-tag bunch of pirates operating in the Caribbean during the late 1680's. Following a period of slavery for defying King James of England, Captain Peter Blood earns his freedom by throwing in with Spanish pirates during a takeover of the Jamaican city of Port Royal, thereby declaring piracy for his own band of brothers - "We, the hunted, will now hunt!" The supporting cast is a good one as well. Olivia Havilland marks her first of many team-ups with co-star Flynn, generally at odds with the British pirate for most of the story, even though you can sense her attraction to the rogue. It's interesting that their eventual hook up doesn't occur until the virtual end of the story, but the wait turns out to be worth it.Poor Basil Rathbone though. As both pirate rival and partner of Captain Blood, his character Levasseur falls victim to Blood's sword in a duel over the purchase of Lady Arabella's (de Havilland) freedom, after she and Lord Willoughby (Henry Stephenson) are taken hostage off a British ship. The scene is a preview of their next clash in "The Adventures of Robin Hood", when Rathbone's character in that film also dies at the hands of the titled hero. That may be the reason he went with the Sherlock Holmes films, not too many swords in that series of pictures.The only thing that didn't ring true for me in the story was when Blood's crew challenged his authority to return to Port Royal to take on the British governor of the island, still protected by the British navy. All it takes for the crew to change their mind is for Blood to agree with them!, and they turn on a dime and decide that taking it to the Brits would be the best thing to do! I think Blood could have shown more surprise at that reaction; talk about leading from behind!Granted, this was still an early time in the history of talking movies, but this would have been an excellent candidate for the color treatment. I felt the same way about "The Sea Hawk", which came a couple years after 'Robin Hood', which WAS filmed in color. Had the studios had the benefit of foresight, I think they might have changed their options. All those gnarly pirates battling on the open seas with their sword and cannon would have been quite the impressive sight done up in color, because it was stunning as it was in glorious black and white.

From the moment Blood learns that England has changed kings, from the bad King James to the good King William, and announces that he and his crew will fight the French to save Jamaica to the conclusion of the sea battle when the English flag is raised in triumph, this is as exciting as any movie scenes ever shot.Everything contributes: Michael Curtiz' brilliant direction, Erich Korngold's exciting music, the individual character creations by several of the actors.We will see a fair amount of this again, done even better, in the Curtiz-Flynn-Korngold collaborations The Sea Hawk and The Adventures of Robin Hood. But it is fascinating, and very exciting, to see how it all started.Historical note: I wonder if there is any connection between the change of English kings in this movie and the contemporary change of kings (1936) when Edward VIII abdicates and his younger brother George VI replaces him. (The subject of the excellent modern movie The King's Speech.) Certainly Edward VIII was not hated, as James II was. Was there a reason why George VI would have been a more inspiring monarch for the British in 1936? The Treaty of Munich was still two years away. How many English saw the country headed for war in 1936?

Captain Blood, the one that started it all. The beginning of both the Flynn-de Havilland partnership and the Flynn-Curtiz partnership, establishing Erich Wolfgang Korngold as a movie composer and ushering in a new era of swashbucklers. Talk about a great start for two careers; two unknown actors being cast in a major production at one of Hollywood's biggest studios. Should Hollywood have taken more risks like this more often or was this just a freakishly lucky gamble?Warner Bros where the best studio of the 1930's when it came to making thrillers and action pictures in this their answer of MGM's Mutiny on the Bounty. The combination of Michael Curtiz's direction, Erich Wolfgang Korngold's pumping music scores, Errol Fylnn's embodiment of a swashbuckling action hero and the dynamic he shared with Olivia de Havilland represents all the elements coming together at the right place and time to create something truly special. It's no surprise that these elements would reunite many times over the next few years.The scenes between Flynn and de Havilland are pure movie magic, when they're together and alone it's like they're suddenly in a whole world of their own, it's truly phenomenal. With his long hair and muscular physique I don't think Flynn has ever been more attractive that he was in Captain Blood; he certainly never appeared this beat up than he did in any of his subsequent movies. During production scenes had to be reshot as Fylnn's acting had improved so dramatically over time; the man is a far better actor than he's given credit for. The character of Peter Blood reflects Flynn's real life personality, a free spirit who has had enough adventure for 6 years to last him 6 lifetimes. De Havilland on the other hand was only 19 during the filming of Captain Blood, and it never ceases to amaze me I watch her in a film and knowing that she is still alive. As of writing this review there are only two years left until see reaches 100. I am counting down the days.The plot of Captain Blood is a surprisingly empowering tale of defiance against corrupt authority and the seaming meaninglessness of war ("I fought for the French against the Spanish and the Spanish against the French") giving the film that added intelligent edge but this doesn't take away from the film's aurora of just pure unmitigated fun.