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Mutiny on the Bounty
title card
Directed by	Frank Lloyd
Produced by	Irving Thalberg
Written by	Novel: Charles Nordhoff James Norman Hall Screenplay: Talbot Jennings Jules Furthman Carey Wilson
Starring	Charles Laughton Clark Gable Franchot Tone Movita Mamo
Music by	Score: Herbert Stothart Nat W. Finston (uncredited) Song: Walter Jurmann Bronisław Kaper (both uncrdited)
Cinematography	Arthur Edeson
Editing by	Margaret Booth
Distributed by	Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Release date(s)	November 8, 1935
Running time	132 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English

Mutiny on the Bounty is a 1935 film starring Charles Laughton and Clark Gable based on the Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall novel Mutiny on the "Bounty".

The film was one of the biggest hits of its time and remains a classic today and, although its historical accuracy has been seriously questioned (inevitable as it is based in a novel about the facts, not the facts themselves) it is considered by film critics to be the best film inspired by the mutiny.

[edit] Plot

The movie chronicles the real-life mutiny aboard the Bounty led by Fletcher Christian against the ship's captain, William Bligh. Like the novel, it portrays Captain Bligh as an abusive villain whose cruelty towards the crew and most of the officers leads Christian to mutiny. It contains scenes of the trials of those who had been put off the ship on the launch. It also deals with the aftermath.

[edit] Historical inaccuracies

Charles Laughton as Captain Bligh set adrift by Fletcher Christian (Clark Gable)

The movie does contain a few historical inaccuracies. Captain Bligh was never on board HMS Pandora, nor was he present at the trial of the mutineers who stayed on Tahiti. At the time he was halfway around the world on a second voyage for breadfruit plants. Fletcher Christian's father had died many years before Christian's travels on board the Bounty—the movie shows the elder Christian at the trial. It should be noted though, that the movie was always presented as an adaptation of the Nordhoff and Hall trilogy, which already differed from the actual story of the mutiny.

Bligh is depicted as a brutal, sadistic disciplinarian. Particular episodes include a keelhauling and flogging a dead man. Neither of these happened. Keelhauling was used rarely, if at all, and had been abandoned long before Bligh's time. Indeed the meticulous record of the Bounty's log reveals that the flogging rate was lower than the average for that time. Prior to the Mutiny the "Bounty" had only two deaths—one seaman died of scurvy (not keelhauling) and the ship's surgeon died apparently of drink and indolence and not as a result of abuse by Bligh. Likewise the movie shows the mutineers taking over the ship only after killing several loyal crewmen when in fact none died—although one crewman came very close to shooting Bligh until stopped by Christian. Lastly Christian is shown being inspired to take over the ship after several crewmen have unjustly been put into irons by Bligh; this is fictional license.

However, some historically accurate aspects exist in the film. Clark Gable had to shave off his famous moustache because the sailors in the Royal Navy in the eighteenth century had to be clean-shaven. Gable was reluctant to shave it off, though.

In the final scene of the film Gable gives a rousing speech to his fellow mutineers speaking of creating a perfect society of free men on Pitcairn away from Bligh and the Navy. The reality was very different. Free from the restraints of Naval discipline the mutineers proved incapable of self-government. Pitcairn degenerated into a true hell on earth of drunkenness, rape and ultimately murder. Apart from John Adams all the mutineers perished, most of them by violence. Whether the film intended the irony is not known.