‘Captain Blood’ 4K UHD Blu-ray Review: The Criterion Collection

Although he had but to develop his trademark pencil-thin mustache, Errol Flynn rocketed to stardom with Michael Curtiz’s Captain Blood, a high-spirited remake of a 1924 silent movie of the identical identify (primarily based on a novel by Rafael Sabatini) that supplied the actor with the primary of his eight on-screen pairings with Olivia de Havilland. Not practically as thrilling as 1940’s The Sea Hawk, the movie—greenlit after MGM’s Mutiny on the Bounty proved a success—contains a spirited rating by the legendary Erich Wolfgang Korngold, and provides jolly pirate motion whereas concurrently, and none too subtly, mocking the dictatorial British monarchy.

In 1685 England, Dr. Peter Blood (Flynn, in a job initially supposed for Robert Donat) helps deal with a insurgent wounded in an rebellion towards King James II, and for his hassle will get labeled a traitor and despatched to Port Royal in Jamaica to be bought into slavery. There, he’s bought by the gorgeous niece, Arabella (de Havilland), of a vicious plantation proprietor (Lionel Atwill), however throughout an assault on the colony by a Spanish armada, Blood takes to the ocean aboard a stolen military vessel. Now a infamous pirate surrounded by a band of loyal, exiled Englishmen, Blood—an Irish buccaneer with vigor and wit to spare—steals from anybody silly sufficient to cross his path and spars with a rascally Spanish pirate (Basil Rathbone) earlier than finally reuniting with, and efficiently wooing, Arabella.

That Blood’s repute is restored due to the newly put in King William doesn’t change the movie’s playful critique of English rule, which is introduced as ruthless, irrational, and wholly unconcerned with the democratic beliefs of freedom and equality. Nonetheless, such rusty political undercurrents—clearly supposed to attraction to the movie’s tyranny-loathing American viewers—are a lot much less necessary than Flynn’s dashing, gallant efficiency because the impudent Blood.

Conveying emotion in massive, broad strokes and thru buoyant, lithesome physicality, Flynn—shot in mild virtually as downy as that which envelops de Havilland—dominates Curtiz’s ceaselessly overcrowded and busy body like a shining sword chopping via the fog. On account of the charming de Havilland’s rote function as a moralizing stick-in-the-mud, the movie’s central romance isn’t as fascinating because the on-screen couple’s later collaborations, and one pines for extra (and extra elaborate) set items than the considerably wood Flynn-Rathbone duel and a sea battle culled from silent film and miniature mannequin footage. But even when Captain Blood usually appears overloaded with an excessive amount of time-consuming exposition and unfunny peripheral characters, Flynn’s depraved, depraved appeal helps preserve this excessive seas journey afloat.

Picture/Sound

From densely populated crowd scenes to the soft-lit close-ups of Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland, the brand new 4K digital restoration of Captain Blood is wealthy intimately, highlighting the movie’s elaborate costumes and beautiful set design. Distinction is powerful, with inky blacks and a variety of grays all through, whereas grain is evenly distributed, exhibiting no indicators of smoothing. The uncompressed mono soundtrack is surprisingly sturdy for a movie from 1935, particularly with regard to Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s rousing rating, with little of the tinniness that also plagued many Hollywood movies till a pair years later.

Extras

On his audio commentary, creator Alan Okay. Rode does a superb job of contextualizing the discharge of the movie, each via its significance in re-popularizing the swashbuckler movie and its relevance in its director and lead actors’ careers. He additionally talks at size in regards to the 1922 supply novel and 1924 silent movie. Additionally included is a 22-minute documentary on the movie from 2005, wherein varied interviewees, together with the late TCM host Robert Osborne, speak about Flynn’s profession, the chance Warner Bros. took in pairing two comparatively unknown stars within the lead roles, and the elements performed by Basil Rathbone and Lionel Atwell. Rounding out the package deal is the Lux Radio Theatre adaptation of the movie from 1937, with Flynn, Havilland, and Basil Rathbone and a foldout booklet with an essay by Farran Smith Nehme that deftly covers, amongst different issues, Flynn’s star-making flip, the variation course of, and the movie’s particular results.

Total

The Criterion Collection has outfitted Michael Curtiz’s basic swashbuckler with a surprising new 4K switch and small but incisive batch of extras.