Mutiny on the Bounty (1935)

Winner of Best Picture and one of MGM's biggest hits of the 30s, Mutiny on the Bounty is a film about the real life events where a crew of British sailors mutinied against their Captain in the late 1700s. The year after Clark Gable made it big with It Happened one Night, he stars in yet another critical and box office success. This time, Mutiny has him flexing his acting chops by squaring off against Charles Laughton who plays the tyrannical Captain Bligh.

And that there is the best part of the film, in my opinion. The conflict between the two powerhouse performances of Gable and Laughton was tense, and what escalated it for me was the strict manners of it all. You could tell if they weren't two British officers these men would wanna tear eachothers heads off. But instead they have to communicate in a "civilized" way. Part of this tension between the men may have been real too as its reported that Laughton was resentful of Gable, who seemed to command more attention off screen and was obviously so much more physically appealing than himself.

Besides that I found the film to be formulaic. The trip is really just a string of cruelties interlaced with shots of the ship travelling on a map. I can understand that this is a movie based on a real event, and so theres not much more you can do, but a quick Google reveals much of the cruelty inflicted by Bligh was orchestrated purely for the film. In fact it was such a typical 30s film I was surprised the Tahitian's didn't also speak English. I think I just wish the film did something creative with itself, rather than entirely resting on the laurels of its performances and visual cruelties. Overall, it was an interesting case study of an event I'd never heard of before that I will probably never return to again.