Captain Blood 1935
The Criterion Collection recently chose Captain Blood for a blu-ray release, which got me curious about it. Then I had a chance to borrow a digital copy (not Criterion), knowing nothing else about it, but with fairly high hopes. It is hard to fairly judge old movies, but a lot of this movie was disappointing. Errol Flynn, in his breakthrough role, plays a pirate so you would think there would be a lot of swashbuckling, but instead, you don't even get a sword fight until about two thirds of the way through the movie. The sword fights and choreography generally aren't great, but maybe were more exciting at the time. For that matter it takes quite a while for Captain Blood to even become a pirate, so you have to wade through a lot of setup which is very heavy on dialogue and light on any kind of action. Some of the sets are really impressive though, including some old sailing ships. About halfway through the movie a French pirate attacks a British ship and they don't even show us the battle, just one blast from a cannon and the next scene it is over and the pirates have won. So it was kind of slow going and not that exciting for a while, but definitely picked up at the end. Even so, there were a lot of critical plot points that didn't make much sense, like Captain Blood returning as a pirate to Port Royal, Jamaica where the entire crew would probably be arrested and hanged. Or some beyond logic bargaining for his love interest (a 19 year old Olivia de Havilland in her first major role) from a French pirate. Despite the contortions, the final payoff was actually pretty good, albeit unlikely. And they do deliver on a big naval battle at the end with some impressive action and explosions. I can see why audiences probably left the theaters happy, but it took me several nights to get through the movie and it wasn't looking that great for a while.
Written: 21 Oct 2025