The history of Dr. Peter Blood, Sabatini's gentleman corsair, is treated with visual beauty and a fine, swaggering arrogance in the new screen version of "Captain Blood" at the Strand Theatre. With a spirited and criminally good-looking Australian named Errol Flynn playing the genteel buccaneer to the hilt, the photoplay recaptures the air of high romantic adventure which is so essential to the tale. Providing a properly picturesque background for Dr. Blood's piratical career, the Warner Brothers skillfully reconstruct the England of the sanguinary Monmouth uprising, the West Indies of tortured slaves and savage masters, and the ships that sailed the Spanish Main flying the jolly roger.
Only yesterday Basil Rathbone was grinding the poor of Paris in "A Tale of Two Cities," and now, with equal skill if slightly increased likableness, he is quarreling with Captain Blood over the disposition of the handsome English captive, Miss Arabella Bishop. Mr. Rathbone has a habit of dying violently in his pictures, but his demise in this one, when Blood punctures him at the conclusion of a desperately waged duel, seems more lamentable than usual. Perhaps it is because he lacks the proper seasoning of villainy this time.
All Levasseur, the picturesque French freebooter, wanted was the girl, who was rightfully his by right of conquest. Somehow it seemed extravagantly prissy of the Englishman to fight him in abstract defense of the lady's honor instead of admitting candidly that he wanted Arabella for himself. Anyway, it is a brave bit of sword-play that these audacious fellows put on, up and down the Coast, while their rival crews look on.
You may recall that Dr. Blood was an amateur pirate, forced into the business because King James had shipped him off to the Indies with the other condemned Monmouth rebels. A physician by profession, his part in the uprising was innocent, but the king's court convicted him along with the rest. He scorned his masters and laughed when they flogged him, but Arabella saved him from a living death in her uncle's mines at Port Royal because she liked his courage and his face. Then he led the slaves in an uprising, stole a Spanish ship while its crew was looting the town and became the most celebrated corsair in the Caribbean.
Mr. Flynn has an effective cast at his back. Olivia de Havilland is a lady of rapturous loveliness and well worth fighting for. Lionel Atwill, as the cruel governor of Port Royal, is as thorough a knave as Peter Blood is a gentleman. Among the excellent group of players who people the smaller rôles you will discover E. E. Clive, the wonderful jurist of "A Tale of Two Cities," who is humorously effective if somewhat less spectacular as the clerk of the bloody assizes.
CAPTAIN BLOOD, based on the novel by Rafael Sabatini; screen play by Casey Robinson; directed by Michael Curtiz; a Warner Brothers production. At the Strand.
Peter Blood . . . . . Errol Flynn
Arabella Bishop . . . . . Olivia de Havilland
Colonel Bishop . . . . . Lionel Atwill
Levasseur . . . . . Basil Rathbone
Jeremy Pitt . . . . . Ross Alexander
Hagthorpe . . . . . Guy Kibbee
Lord Willoughby . . . . . Henry Stephenson
Wolverstone . . . . . Robert Barrat
Dr. Bronson . . . . . Hobart Cavanaugh
Dr. Whacker . . . . . Donald Meek
Mrs. Barlow . . . . . Jessie Ralph
Honesty Nutall . . . . . Forrester Harvey
Rev. Ogle . . . . . Frank McGlynn Sr.
Captain Gardner . . . . . Holmes Herbert
Andrew Baynes . . . . . David Torrence
Cahusac . . . . . J. Carroll Naish
Don Diego . . . . . Pedro de Cordoba
Governor Steed . . . . . George Hassell
Kent . . . . . Harry Cording
Baron Jeffreys . . . . . Leonard Mudie
Prosecutor . . . . . Ivan Simpson
Captain Hobart . . . . . Stuart Casey
Lord Gildoy . . . . . Dennis D. Auburn
Mrs. Steed . . . . . Mary Forbes
Clerk of the Court . . . . . E. E. Clive
Lord Chester Dyke . . . . . Colin Kenny
Mrs. Baynes . . . . . Maude Leslie
Slave . . . . . Gardner James
King James . . . . . Vernon Steele
ANDRE SENNWALD New York Times 27 December 1935
Captain Blood
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