Synopsis:
Notorious buccaneer and adventurer, Henry Morgan (Laird Cregar, I Wake Up Screaming), is appointed governor of Jamaica. Morgan asks fellow buccaneer, Captain Jamie Waring (Tyrone Power, Witness for the Prosecution), to help him bring order to the region. However, another pirate, Captain Billy Leech (George Sanders, The Picture of Dorian Gray), intends to undermine Morgan’s peace efforts.
Reaction & Thoughts:
“All you can do is shoot and kill and prey on women.”
Colorful, rousing adventure tale from a novel by Italian-English author Rafael Sabatini, the man behind such stalwarts of the swash and buckle genre like The Sea Hawk and Captain Blood (both books were filmed by Hollywood during its heydays).
Directed by Henry King (The Song of Bernadette). The screenplay is by Ben Hecht (Wuthering Heights and His Girl Friday) and Seton I. Miller (The Adventures of Robin Hood). This lavishly produced pirate movie gets lots of things right, but falls a tad short in some important areas, specifically story and character development.
The narrative, which mixes real-life people with fictional characters, isn’t all that engaging. The main character is not likable either. Worst of all, the crass misogyny that runs through the story is hard to take at times. Maureen O’Hara (How Green Was My Valley), who plays Tyrone Power’s love interest, is used and abused throughout the film, not the thing you expect to see in a purely escapist fare.
Leon Shamroy’s (Cleopatra) gorgeous, Oscar-winning Technicolor photography is the raison d’etre to watch the film — it’s as if you are watching some undiscovered Goya paintings. The sets, costumes, and special visual effects in The Black Swan are great as well. Alfred Newman’s (Airport) music score is pretty awesome, too.
The movie has an interesting supporting cast. George Sanders is fun as Power’s antagonist. Sanders has a memorable sword fight with Power near the end of the movie (ironically, sixteen years later, Power died of a heart attack while completing a duel sequence with Sanders in Robert Aldrich’s epic Solomon and Sheba).
I also liked Laird Cregar as the legendary Welsh buccaneer Henry Morgan. The wonderful cast also includes Thomas Mitchell (Gone with the Wind) as Power’s sidekick Tommy Blue, George Zucco (House of Frankenstein) as Lord Denby, and a very young Anthony Quinn (The Guns of Navarone) as one-eyed pirate Wogan.
Conclusions & Final Thoughts:
Although I didn’t enjoy some aspects of the movie (the so-called story is kinda creepy), The Black Swan is entertaining enough for me to recommend it. I thought the film’s strong production values helped hide some of its imperfections. Make yourself a cocktail with Captain Morgan and enjoy! Color, 85 minutes, Not Rated.
Diary of A Movie Maniac 
Anything with Laird Cregar > anything without Laird Cregar.
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Such a great actor! Superb in The Lodger, Hangover Square, etc.
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I’m a big Tyrone Power fan, but I have to agree with you that in this film he’s not as likable – despite the other excellent aspects of the film, like Laird Cregar. After all his abuse, it’s hard to believe she’d really fall for him.
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“After all his abuse, it’s hard to believe she’d really fall for him.” Exactly! That was my main issue with the movie. BTW, Maureen O’Hara gets abused a lot (in movies)! Swan, The Quiet Man, McLintock!, just to name a few.
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It’s funny how that happened so often in her career, since she’s usually associated with playing strong roles.
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Interesting take! I find this film extremely likable and enjoyable — possibly because it doesn’t gloss over the kinds of attitudes and behavior that men with few scruples generally exhibit toward women. I don’t see this film as excusing or condoning them, but more as showing that, if people could treat Maureen O’Hara that way and think this is just fine, what does that tell us about them, and about the attitudes and mores of that age?
The kind of careless misogyny exhibited here doesn’t really bother me, as a woman, perhaps because it is so pervasive — this is not one particular man hating women, or a group of men hating one particular woman. It’s simply a picture of a world where right and wrong are not considered at all important… which sometimes seems like an awfully good description of our modern age, too.
Also, this is the movie that made me a Tyrone Power fan, as his Jamie Boy is a delightful mixture of mischievous, rowdy, and willing to learn and change when the world around him changes. He grows from someone who would call Maureen’s character “captain’s share” and then pretends to be gallant toward her when the meet again, to someone who risks his own life to protect her.
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Good points. I try not to apply modern sensibilities to old movies, especially period pieces made during the Hollywood Golden Era. You are right, this is probably an accurate depiction of gender roles in the 17th century. I’ve always defended the so-called anti-women ending of Quiet Man (ironically, also with Maureen), so I get what you are saying. Still, it was a little unpleasant to watch Tyron’s bad behavior. But it’s a fun pirate movie.
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