Mutiny on the Bounty (1962)
Like the following year’s Cleopatra, the drama behind the scenes of Lewis Milestone’s Mutiny on the Bounty surpassed the film itself. Its reputation has inched upward after a rocky reception in 1962; Trevor Howard delivers a scathing take on the surly Captain Bligh, and as the foppish Fletcher Christian, Marlon Brando can’t help but be compelling. Though the three-hour running time is daunting, Milestone has a steady hand on the rudder and Robert Surtees’s glorious 70MM imagery is a big help.
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About Larry Karaszewski
Larry Karaszewski and his writing/directing/producing partner Scott Alexander are best known for writing unusual true stories. Their current release is “Dolemite is My Name” featuring Eddie Murphy as Rudy Ray Moore. The duo previously created the hit television miniseries “The People v O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story” for which they won the Golden Globe, Emmy, PGA and WGA Awards. They also won the Golden Globe and WGA Award for the film “The People vs Larry Flynt.” Other movies include the Oscar winning “Ed Wood” (WGA nomination), “Big Eyes” (Independent Spirit nomination), “Auto Focus" and “Man on the Moon.” The team has been inducted into the Final Draft Screenwriting Hall of Fame. Larry is also a Governor for writers branch, co-chair of the International Feature Film category, and a Vice President of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences.
I’d love to see this movie in 70 mm – if there are any theaters left, anywhere, that still project 70-mm. The images in 70 mm are amazingly beautiful.
On a related note, I toured the replica of the “Bounty” when she visited Chicago during the tour of the Tall Ships in 2003. It was a beautiful piece of work, though it’s difficult to imagine, nowadays, how so many humans could live in such a cramped shell for months at a time. Nine years later, in 2012, the ”
Bounty” sank in a hurricane off the Carolina coast. The Coast Guard blamed the loss of the ship on mistakes by the captain – mistakes that Captain Bligh, who was a superb navigator and seaman, probably wouldn’t have made.
Larry, one of your best. #1 I want to now see the movie, #2- Informative, #3- it proves my premise that all TFH should be shot on location.
Actually there’s now three TFH commentaries for this “Bounty” version. There was another one done by famed actor (and sometime director of great comedies) Buster Crabbe in 2012. All three are worthwhile & nicely complement each other. I’m still disappointed that David Lean couldn’t finish his double feature version of the story (which I think later became the basis of the Donaldson one).
That said, I’m a big fan of your commentaries (& of course your film work with Scott Alexander) which over the years have led me to some wonderful discoveries, especially those obscure 70’s oddities you seem to enjoy so much. Thank you for that!
[…] From Hell‘s Larry Karaszewski has been earning a sizable tax deduction by posting three riffs on the three biggest Bounty movies — the 1935 and ’62 versions of of Mutiny on […]