Captain Horatio Hornblower (1951)

 

            “Captain Horatio Hornblower” (known as “Captain Horatio Hornblower, R.N.” in the United Kingdom) was one of the last swashbuckler films.  It was natural that C.S. Forester’s Hornblower series would be made into a movie.  His first three were used for the screenplay.  Forester helped adapt his books.  Those titles were “The Happy Return”, “A Ship of the Line”, and “Flying Colours”.  Raoul Walsh (Objective Burma, Battle Cry, The Naked and the Dead) was chosen for his skill at making action movies.  And action was what he was interested in.  When dialogue scenes were shot, Walsh took a seat and read a newspaper.  The studio originally wanted Errol Flynn, but thankfully settled for Gregory Peck.  Flynn would have been wrong for the role.  Hornblower is a stoical leader who is more cerebral than any Flynn character.  The ship from Disney’s “Treasure Island” was used for some of the scenes.  The other ships were refurbished vessels.  The final scene was shot on the HMS Victory.  The movie’s profit more than doubled its budget.

            The movie is set in 1807.  A narrator tells us the HMS Lydia (a 38-gun frigate) is on a secret mission around Cape Horn into the Pacific.  Only Hornblower knows their mission.  It is so important that when the doctor urges they make land to deal with a scurvy outbreak, Hornblower turns him down.  The movie is filled with nautical details that are informative.  The ship routines are accurately portrayed.  When the ship is becalmed, it is towed by boats.  A sailor is flogged.  Hornblower is a sailor captain, meaning he believes a happy ship is a good ship.  But he backs up the officer who ordered the flogging and then in his cabin dresses the officer down.  The movie can be used as a study in command.  The mission is to support a rebellion in Central America against the French.  This means helping “El Supremo” who is an insane a-hole. 

            The first action scene is the boarding of the 60-gun Spanish ship Natividad which he then has to turn it over to the odious “El Supremo”.  Soon after, he takes aboard the sister of the Duke of Wellington.  Barbara (Virginia Mayo) gets off on the wrong foot with Horatio like in every similar situation in movie history.  Spoiler alert:  that will change.  The next action scene is the Lydia versus the Natividad.  The scene lasts ten minutes and has plenty of mayhem.  There’s lots of falling debris, but little blood even though the movie was made in brilliant technicolor.  This is followed by two montages:  repairs and romance.  Unfortunately, Horatio is married and Barbara is engaged. To Hornblower’s admiral.  Awkward!  The final set piece has Hornblower’s ship of the line attacking French ships in a port.  More falling debris.  It’s rousing with an unpredictable result. 

            “Captain Horatio Hornblower” is not as good as the Hornblower series of movies, but it is not bad as a swashbuckler.  The combat is not realistic.  No one is felled by a splinter.  It’s vivid and done with verve, which is what you would expect from Walsh.  The battles do not look like models because actual ships were used.  The cinematography and score match the action well.  The sets are excellent.   It is a educational on tactics.  However, it is very command-oriented with little coverage below decks.  The movie goes for romance over bromance.  Puzzlingly, the plot sets up some dysfunction among the officers, then doesn’t deliver.  The romance is from the black and white era, although the movie is in color.  Mayo and Peck have some chemistry, but the relationship is chaste.  Peck is his usual solid self (did he make any bad movies?) and was a good choice for Hornblower.  He clearly read some of the books because he has Hornblower’s mannerisms and personality down pat.  The rest of the cast is average.  Mayo was chosen for her beauty, but she was not a bad actress.  The first third of the movie is marred by the buffoonish El Supremo.  But then he gets his comeuppance in a crowd-pleasing way.  The movie’s top priority is entertainment and it succeeds in that.  If you learn a little about Napoleonic naval warfare, that’s a bonus.  The most important thing to me is the audience was introduced to the greatest character in Napoleonic naval fiction.

            We have plenty of pirate movies, but not that many naval combat movies from the age of sailing ships.  This movie and “Damn the Defiant!” are the best two from that era. “Master and Commander” tops them, but since it was not a big box office success, we probably won’t be seeing many more swashbucklers.   If you have seen all the “Pirates of the Caribbean” movies, try watching something a bit more realistic.

GRADE  =  B