In the Wake of the Bounty

I have to admit that I was not sure of what I would be seeing when I finally got a copy of In The Wake Of The Bounty. The Australian film is noted today for being the debut of Errol Flynn in motion pictures is mostly a fine documentary about the lives of the folks on rugged Pitcairn Island, the descendants of the Bounty mutineers and the women they took with them from Tahiti.

When MGM did it's grand scale production of Mutiny on the Bounty in 1935, Louis B. Mayer bought all the rights to this film and it was never shown in America intact. Pieces of it were seen in short documentary subjects about Pitcairn Island.

The producer/director/writer of In The Wake Of The Bounty was Charles Clauvel who some would credit with being the father of Australian cinema. He and his wife and baby girl took motion picture cameras and a crew to Pitcairn Island and put together a fine feature film documentary. And he had about 15 to 20 minutes of acting.

It's a technique that Americans will be familiar with if they watch the History Channel. It calls for the use of some brief live action sequences interspersed with documentary footage and voice-over commentary about whatever event the program is talking about. This is the function of Errol Flynn and the small cast who reenact the Bounty mutiny in microcosm.

Certainly Charles Clauvel did not have the facilities that Louis B. Mayer had so reviewers should go easy on this intrepid Australian who went out to a rarely seen part of the world. Instead of comparing In The Wake Of The Bounty to it's later and more known successors, it might better be compared to some of the documentaries of Frank Buck or Martin and Osa Johnson.

To be sure the acting isn't of the best caliber, I've seen worse however. The film really didn't need the actors, it should have been much better as a straight documentary.

On the other hand Errol Flynn might then have toiled in obscurity and who knows who would have played all those swashbuckling heroes at Warner Brothers.