Word: laughton
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...Charles Laughton gives us Captain Bligh, an iron-willed flend running amuck at sea, where reason is powerless to restrain him. In spite of his round, boyish face, bestial cruelty disguised as lawful discipline seems to be Laughton's forte. This was demonstrated in "Les Miserables" as well as in the present picture. Those thick lips and pug nose of his are becoming the cinematic symbol of brutality...
Mutiny on the Bounty (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer) exhibits more strikingly than any previous cinema in which he has appeared the peculiar capacity of Actor Charles Laughton to seem created by providential dispensation in the identical likeness of whomever he undertakes to impersonate. Actor Laughton is currently in London preparing to appear in an English version of Cyrano de Bergerac. To perfect his understanding of the play, he learned it by heart in French and had up to last week written out twelve copies by memory. Before making Mutiny on the Bounty he went to London, said to Gieves, Bond Street...
Preliminaries like these do not, in Actor Laughton's case, illustrate that eccentric vanity which distinguishes so many of his confreres. They are superficial but valid symbols of his extraordinary devotion to the task at hand, a devotion amounting to an obsession and one which, in a curious way, has had an important secondary effect upon his work in this picture. The character of Captain Bligh, as presented to posterity by Charles Nordhoff & James Norman Hall, was remarkable for combining, with the peevish, effeminate cruelty which caused the Bounty's crew to set him adrift in an open...
Aside from Actor Laughton's performance, Mutiny on the Bounty is all that anyone would have any right to expect. The three-volume epic of Mutiny on the Bounty, Men Against the Sea and Pitcairn's Island (TIME. Oct. 17, 1932; Jan. 15, 1934; Nov. 5, 1934), written from and for an amazing record, was not designed for neat conversion into a scenario. Despite the efforts of Producer Irving Thalberg, Director Frank Lloyd, three scenarists and $2,000,000 to give it balance, polish and direction, the picture lacks all three. There are intervals when the two hours...
...dead sailor to the instant when he left the court martial, we felt just as strongly as Fletcher Christian. Even during his moments of greatness when he was navigating an open boat 3500 miles out of sight of land, he never lost his sadistic and narrow outlook. Charles Laughton became Captain Bligh...