Evan D. As a project this year we are taking a trip through time to revisit all of the Best Picture winners in history, Wings to Anora. Mutiny on the Bounty is the eighth film in that series, to see all the other Best Picture reviews, click here. Perhaps Academy voters were feeling a bit nostalgic in the lead up to the 1936 ceremony as the big winner this year, Mutiny on the Bounty saw the return of some familiar faces. Frank Lloyd was only two years removed from his second Best Director and first Best Picture win with Cavalcade while lead actor Clark Gable stars fresh off his Best Actor win for It Happened One Night. This win would make Lloyd the first man to direct two films to a best picture win.
Mutiny on the Bounty tells the real story — with a great deal of fictionalization — of a British naval crew on mission to Tahiti who suffered great indignity at the hands of their captain and eventually revolted. The nefarious and corrupt Captain Bligh, played devilishly by Charles Laughton, reveled in subjecting his crew to performative flogging while he siphoned off their food rations for himself. As the crew arrives in Tahiti to much adoration from the locals, the abuse becomes too much to bear for first admiral Fletcher Christian (Gable) and some of the more beleaguered deckhands who together plot to overthrow the tyrannical captain. While Mutiny on the Bounty is one of those early Best Picture winners whose virtues still shine through today, it is still a product of its time. The commentary on collective power and imagery of Bligh as a sort of omnipresent threat works just as well now as ever. Laughton hovers over his terrified crew, serving as a wonderful foil for Gable’s increasingly exasperated Christian. Most of all the staging of a ship at sea is impressive for the time and a film shot mostly in Southern California. For all the parts that do work, nearly everything depicted of Tahiti is problematic in hindsight. Lloyd’s camera constantly draws parallels between the native people and animals, while the Tahitian women do nothing but throw themselves at the ragged men of the Bounty’s crew. A disorienting viewing experience from a modern vantage, but as is often the case with these old epics the film complicates outdated imagery with some surprisingly current sensibilities. When asked about language, the Tahitian chief (Bill Bambridge) speaks about the relative primitivism of the English and their lack of feeling. Taken all together the ideas of Mutiny on the Bounty resonate more strongly today than the issues revealed by its age. A rousing drama pitting workers against a tyrannical captain that echos the labor struggles we see even today. Just like Lloyd’s previous winner, the filmmaking is excellent but contained within it is a better, if still flawed story. It is not an all time winner like It Happened One Night, but a worthy one nonetheless. 6/10
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