IN THE WAKE OF THE BOUNTY
Australia, 1933, 66 minutes, Black and white.
Mayne Lynton, Errol Flynn.
Directed by Charles Chauvel.
In the Wake of the Bounty was the first sound feature made by Charles Chauvel and his wife. After beginning their careers in the '20s with such films as The Moth of Moonby, the Chauvels moved into drama and travelogue. It is interesting to see that Elsa Chauvel appears in this film in some of the sequences in the Pitcairn Islands looking after the children. They had the help in this film of veteran photographer Tasman Higgins. They seem to have been strongly influenced by the documentary work of American Robert Flaherty (Moana, Nanook of the North). Flaherty, at this period, made the far superiorly-constructed and filmed Man of Aran. However, In the Wake of the Bounty in its Pitcairn scenes and the photography is an interesting comparison with the work of Flaherty.
The film seems particular primitive in comparison with other films of the time. The historical reconstructions are particularly stilted and melodramatic. The structure of the film is twofold: historical re-enactment of the Mutiny on the Bounty and scenes from the life of the mutineers on Pitcairn Island; secondly, a documentary look at the life on Pitcairn Island in the 1930s.
The film opens in 1810 at an English tavern with old sailors reminiscing about the Bounty and the mutiny. This is a recurring motif and enables the character to make comment on the action. There is also a narrator for the whole film. Bligh is represented as the caricature tyrant handed down - Charles Laughton was not to appear as Bligh until two years after this film. (Blight has also been portrayed by Trevor Howard in 1962 and Anthony Hopkins in 1984.) Of significance, of course, is Errol Flynn's performance as Fletcher Christian. His presence and appearance are quite striking, his delivery of his lines fairly wooden - interesting hearing Errol Flynn with something of an Australian accent. However, after years: of adventure in New Guinea, the Tasmania actor was to go to Hollywood and to be immediately successful in films. (His life was dramatised in the telemovie of My Wicked, Wicked Ways.)
The expected scenes of tyranny on the ship, the plight of the sailors, Christian's sympathy with the sailors, Bligh’s. haughty disdain of the sailors and their complaints, the confrontation between Bligh and Christian are all here. However, there is no psychology in the writing or the portrayals. There are also some scenes of poor food, punishment and torture. There are by contrast, lyrical sequences in Tahiti - all tropical Paradise, beautiful Tahitian maidens. There is also Bligh's tyranny in his rules as the ship left Tahiti. Some of the women go with the crew. We see Christian having struggles of conscience and a very modest and moderate takeover as Christian confronts Bligh in his cabin and in bed. During the second half of the film there are inserts of John Adams and his preaching of Christianity, tension and battles between the English and the Tahitians. Interestingly, the screenplay includes a sequence at the end where some Pitcairn Islanders have problems with getting a doctor to their ill child and with the child's dying it is all interpreted as an atonement for what happened with the Bounty mutineers.
The second part of the film is mainly contemporary documentary. There are excellent vistas of the scenery and the geography of Tahiti, of the Pacific and of Pitcairn Island itself. There is also a great attention to detail of life in Pitcairn in the '30s, of the first Australian liner to land at Pitcairn, of the first cameras to go there. We see the people, they are identified as the descendants of Fletcher Christian and the other mutineers. We see touristic developments, development of industries and social and educational development. There is a focus on a marriage sequence, information is given about the language, the rules of living on Pitcairn. There are comments about savages in the past and British culture. The film is strong on its Australian emphasis - the first to go to Pitcairn and film there.
The film is something of a landmark in Australian cinema, even though it is not the easiest film to sit through. Chauvel was to go on to great films from Heritage and Uncivilised in the mid-'30s to The 40,000 Horsemen and Rats of Tobruk, then to Sons of Matthew and Jedda. Documentaries were to develop. Errol Flynn was to become a star.
The film is an interesting footnote to the many cinema versions of The Mutiny on the Bounty. In the early 1980s, Cecil Holmes followed a reconstruction of the voyage of Bligh and those put in the longboat, from the Central Pacific to Batavia: The Voyage of Bounty's Child.
