Plymouth Adventure

It's 1620 Southampton, England. Pilgrim families are waiting to board the Mayflower. Christopher Jones (Spencer Tracy) is the Captain. The authority is looking to hang the group's leader William Brewster. Among the crew is first-mate Coppin (Lloyd Bridges) and new ship's carpenter John Alden (Van Johnson). The captain conflicts with Dorothy Bradford (Gene Tierney) who is married to William Bradford. Company agent Weston bribes Jones to drop the Pilgrim in Cape Cod, hundreds of miles away from their intended destination in Virginia.

The production spent a lot of money and it shows on the screen. It did win the Oscar for Best Special Effects. Like always with historical dramas, accuracy is suspect. Everything else is a bit middling. This has great actors, but they can't do more than on the page. It feels a bit scattered as the story follows many characters. It's a bit old school with veteran director Clarence Brown and it turns out to be his last. There may not be enough drama to do a movie about the voyage and the movie does not disprove that fear. The romantic drama feels manufactured. In the end, this has the one Oscar and not much else.

An already aged-looking SPENCER TRACY is Captain Jones of the Mayflower in this MGM visualization of what the crossing to the New World may have been like on an overcrowded ship full of hopeful, determined passengers and crew. But neither he nor GENE TIERNEY (as Mrs. Bradford) seem at home in roles that are never really fleshed out by the script. Nevertheless, Tierney gets plenty of wistful close-ups as she gazes toward the horizon (or Tracy), but little of substance to do.

Neither does VAN JOHNSON get more than a brief supporting role as John Alden. LEO GENN gets more material as Tierney's stuffed shirt husband but little can be said of the other passengers except for LLOYD BRIDGES who struts around as a bronzed, blue-eyed pirate with taking ways. He at least livens up the scene whenever he's around.

The main trouble is the lack of strong drama in the script. Most of the passengers are a dull lot. Added to that, the lack of real chemistry between Tracy and Tierney makes it difficult to believe their love could be deep enough for her to care about this rude and cynical man completely lacking any sort of refinement in his nature.

The big storm scene is well realized and staged for maximum effect, but only serves to remind us how dull the other sections of the film are.

Summing up: A very uneven drama about an historical event that celebrated the birth of the New World. Should have been so much better.

Being Italian, I don't know much about the history of the Pilgrim Fathers. "Plymouth Adventure" appears to be a correct, somewhat non-exciting tale of their voyage to America, with all their sufferings and dismay. A patriotic aura pervades the movie, but exceeding rhetoric is carefully avoided: this is a merit of the film. The photography and the costumes are beautiful, the acting is high-standard. The great Spencer Tracy was fifty-two years old when "Plymouth Adventure" was made, and, unfortunately, he looked seventy. Despite his huge talent, he was definitely too old for the role of the captain of the Mayflower. A main theme in the plot is that the Pilgrims survive during the first terrible winter in America thanks to the decisive help of the rough captain. In fact, despite his strong dislike for the Pilgrims, he decides not to abandon them to sure death, because he loves Dorothy Bradford - Gene Tierney. Well, as a proud fan of Gene Tierney, the idea that her fantastic beauty and loveliness could be so crucial in the development of human history sounds perfectly reasonable to me...

Other reviewers talk like Plymouth Adventure is fiction. They think Clarence Brown is like James Cameron, who cares more about the story conforming to a movie than the other way around. In other words, they have no idea what integrity is.

Though much was documented - and is adhered to by the plot points - much is conjecture, and this can be subject to dramatic license. Of course, the dialog is up to the screenwriter and director. We can discuss this, but for me, the language and dialog weren't at all problematic, nor was the lush cinematography, in itself (see below).

I have only two quibbles:

I should have preferred to see Plymouth Adventure in black and white. The Pilgirms were a black and white lot who established a black and white society.

I don't mind myth-making, because I think myths can be metaphors for the truths behind them. Of course, myths can be used in malign ways, as we know from the Nazis. Though not malign, the myth of the Pilgrims is of questionable value, since we know that the Pilgrims were seeking, in the New World, freedom, but freedom to establish their own tyranny. This is different from the myth, say, of George Washington and the cherry tree, since Washington was a true archetype of integrity. Nevertheless, rather than making a debunking movie showing the Pilgrims as a kind of proto-Taliban, perhaps it would be better to let their qualities of courage and resourcefulness stand, and leave the myth to benign neglect.

Where is the masterpiece American film on this dramatic voyage and settlement of the founders of our democracy? Plymouth Adventure, the best of its kind, has many of the virtues of great American studio work (convincing mise en scene, great ship, vivid action [the storm], fine acting [try to ignore the hobbled accents], and smooth story continuity) and can be enjoyed because of all that, but it never conveys a sense of the agonized desperation and profound spiritual quest of the dissenters. Perhaps Gene Tierney is just too beautfiul, perhaps the costumes are just too sparkling, and certainly the tragic affair with the Captain is better suited to a Douglas Sirk melodrama. For a different account, one can view Mayflower (Anthony Hopkins version), but that errs on the side of political correctness, and drab plotting, and tub-sails a low-budget toy Mayflower. We await the great film about the adventure of these heroic common folks to whom we owe so much.