1962’s Mutiny on the Bounty makes the fatal mistake that many modern remakes fall into: it feels the need to make everything bigger. Bigger is not necessarily better. While there is something to be said about spectacle and elaborate set-pieces, they shouldn’t come at the expense of story and entertainment. When Mutiny on the Bounty was first adapted in 1935, it ran a hefty two hours and twelve minutes. The remake adds an additional forty-five minutes to that runtime (even more in the UK release which adds an unnecessary prologue) without adding anything significant to the plot aside from a few minutes in the end that are unnecessary and only serve to shift the tone down and end on a dour note. The more open-ended ending of the Clark Gable adaptation was far more satisfying.
The basic plot hasn’t changed one bit from the previous adaptation; this is basically a true story after all. The year is 1787, and the HMS Bounty sets sail from Britain for Tahiti under the command of Captain William Bligh (Trevor Howard). Their mission is to collect a shipload of breadfruit saplings and transport them to Jamaica with the hopes of cultivating a cheap form of food for the slaves.
Almost immediately, they get off to a difficult start when it is discovered that some cheese is missing. Seaman John Mills (Richard Harris) is accused of the theft, but he knows what really happened: he was ordered to deliver the cheese to Bligh’s residence before setting sail. When he voices this, he is accused of showing contempt for a superior officer and is flogged brutally. First Lieutenant Fletcher Christian (Marlon Brando) is disturbed by this display of brutality from the captain but maintains his discipline.
Things get even worse when Bligh orders the Bounty to try and save time by traveling the shorter, westbound route around Cape Horn, even though this is against the trade winds and faces significant weather problems. The strategy fails and costs the ship much precious time as they ultimately have to backtrack east. To compensate, Bligh pushes the men harder and cuts their rations.
Upon arrival in Tahiti, the men revel in the easygoing lifestyle of the natives. Christian, himself, is smitten with Maimiti (Tarita), a princess. While the men are enjoying their time on the island, delayed by the cultivating season for the breadfruit, Bligh refuses to leave the ship and partake in the merriment. He also tries to order Christian to do the same but is forced to relent when the Tahiti King takes offense to Christian not making love to his daughter.
Once the Bounty gets on its way to Jamaica again, things really turn sour, though. The breadfruit, of which they took in abundance, need lots of water. To make that happen, Blyth heavily rations the water supply for the men. When one of the seamen is found to have been drinking seawater and is delirious, Blyth refuses to allow Christian to give him fresh water. This, along with increasingly brutal, even illegal, degrees of punishment, leads Christian and many of the other men to finally decide they have had enough.
History is written in the eyes of the victorious. Thus we get a story that greatly emphasizes the cruelty of Lieutenant Blyth to justify the actions of Christian and the others. Accounts from the time differ with some even suggesting that he was better than the average ship captain at the time. Without being there to witness the events, all we can do is speculate and fall back on the many novels and films that have been made on the subject.
In them, Blyth is portrayed as a tyrant, inflicting brutal discipline and punishments on his men. In the 1935 film, Charles Laughton played him as cold and humorless, and while Trevor Howard is equally menacing, there is a bit more subtlety to it. Here, Howard is portraying Blyth as a man who deprives himself of the pleasures of life. He can be coerced into participating if diplomacy forces his hand, but he has no joy in it and will retaliate if he thinks his men are laughing at him in any way. What we don’t get is how good he is as a naval man. In the 1935 film, once Blyth is put overboard with his loyal followers, we get scenes of him motivating his men and navigating the ocean to get back to England. This is virtually nonexistent in the 1962 film, where it practically cuts to them already back in England, ignoring just how difficult a task that was. We therefore never get any sense as to what qualities led to him being given command of a ship in the first place outside of being born to the right family. It’s a disservice to his character and makes him more generic.
Even worse is the portrayal of Christian Fletcher. Marlon Brando seems determined to sabotage the film throughout with his choices as an actor. He plays the character as foppish, a dandy that we have a hard time taking seriously. On top of his garish attire and mannerisms, he is speaking with an exaggerated voice that is distracting, making his character feel more like a parody than a real person. This portrayal improves once the mutiny begins, but that doesn’t take place until more than two-thirds of the film is through. This is especially frustrating as it invites unfavorable comparisons between him and Clark Gable’s portrayal.
Director Lewis Milestone, a Russian immigrant to the United States, had been a director since the silent era. He served time on the Hollywood “greylist”, so named because he was not quite blacklisted during the Red Scare but the reins were held much tighter because of this. By the late 1940s, his creativity began to sputter out, and he fell into a period of mediocrity. When he accepted the job to remake Mutiny on the Bounty, it probably seemed like an opportunity to show what he was capable of again.
What we got instead was bloated, filled with many scenes that add color but only serve to draw out the narrative well beyond what’s necessary. The first stop in Tahiti is a prime example of this. It runs for an excessively long period of time with many scenes where all we are seeing is hundreds of scantily clad native women, many wearing nothing but leis covering their upper halves, shaking in a native dance while members of the Bounty lear at them like a bunch of randy teenagers. The camera lingers on these shots like a teenage sex comedy, and after a while, it loses its allure, yet it still goes on and on. This kind of immature filmmaking feels out of place in this movie. I’m no prude, but this quickly falls into the realm of poor taste.
And this isn’t the only part of the film that drags on too much. It takes far too long for this film to get to the mutiny. Every time you think it is about to happen, Christian calmly does nothing until you get the feeling he is just ineffectual as a protagonist. Even the other men get impatience with his lack of action. Brando’s acting isn’t helping, but the script is really to blame for this. There’s slow-burn and then there is glacial-pacing, and this film lands somewhere between these two. This needed some significant trimming in the editing room and a director who could control his lead actor. Brando was notorious for his antics on and off screen, and that unruliness and carelessness can be seen throughout this film.
The biggest problem this film has is that it tries to tell a familiar story that has already been told successfully in a lot less time. When a director does this, the end result is that the new film will be compared unfavorably to the older film. Aside from being black-and-white (which some people dislike for some reason), there is nothing wrong with the original film. It has plenty of excitement and action and still holds up today after ninety years. This second film has a lot of nice production value and is gorgeous to look at, but that wears thin after a while and eventually you start wishing you were watching the earlier film instead. Those production values may bring it notice come awards season, but they don’t win you the Best Picture.
Academy Award Nominations:
Best Picture: Aaron Rosenberg
Best Art Direction - Color: George W. Davis, J. McMillan Johnson, Henry Grace, and Hugh Hunt
Best Cinematography - Color: Robert Surtees
Best Film Editing: John McSweeney Jr.
Best Music Score - Significantly Original: Bronislaw Kaper
Best Song: “Love Song from Mutiny on the Bounty (Follow Me)” Music by Bronislaw Kaper; Lyrics by Paul Francis Webster
Best Special Effects: Visual Effects by A. Arnold Gillespie; Audible Effects by Milo B. Lory
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Release Date: November 8, 1962
Running Time: 178 Minutes (UK: 185 Minutes)
Rated PG
Starring: Marlon Brando, Trevor Howard, Richard Harris, Hugh Griffith, Richard Haydn, and Tarita
Directed by: Lewis Milestone
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