I get a little extra jolt of excitement when I see that Criterion is planning to add a feature from the Warner Brothers’ vault. Having included some the studios gangster classics in their collection (High Sierra, The Roaring Twenties), they have now turned to one of Warners’ crown jewels, Michael Curtiz’s Captain Blood. The dual disc set includes a gorgeous new 4K restoration of the swashbuckling classic, the film looking as pristine as it did during its 1935 debut.
Having previously had success adapting the Rafael Sabatini classic in 1924, studio head Jack Warner felt that a big budget sound version would help bolster the studio’s coffers. Curtiz was assigned to direct with Robert Donat signed to tackle the title role. However, the actor’s extreme asthma made the physicality of the role too difficult for him. Warner decided the then unknown Errol Flynn to the role, trumping the objections of the veteran director. Also cast was 19-year-old Olivia de Havilland.
The chemistry between the two was immediate and the box office returns were massive. Knowing not to tamper with a good thing, the studio continued to give the public what it wanted, Curtiz going on to direct Flynn and de Havilland in seven more films. (He would make four others with just Flynn.)
The template for these films is set in Blood. Flynn is a doctor wrongly accused of treason and sentenced to be sold into slavery. Having been purchased by Arabella Bishop (de Havilland), who hopes to better his situation, Blood seizes on an opportunity to escape, he and other prisoners taking a Spanish ship and embarking on a campaign of piracy against those that oppressed them.
Derring-do becomes the order of the day, ships being sunk and captured, sword fights being the method through which disputes are settled. Basil Rathbone proves a worthy foil as the duplicitous rival pirate Levassuer. The characters’ fight to the death on a rocky shore is a classic and a warm-up for their even better confrontation in 1938’s The Adventure of Robin Hood.
Over 90 years after its release, the film is still great fun, Flynn’s charisma overwhelming, his scenes with de Havilland crackling with sexual tension. Also of note is Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s thundering soundtrack, his first of what would be many for the studio, his work reaching its apex with the Flynn-Curtiz 1940 feature, The Sea Hawk.
This package from Criterion includes the audio commentary from Alan K. Rode, author of Michael Curtiz: A Life in Film, a 2005 documentary on the making of the movie and a radio adaptation starring Flynn, de Havilland and Rathbone. An essay by critic Farran Smith Nehme rounds out this package, a glorious feature from yesterday preserved for viewers of tomorrow.
