by Chris Marshall:
As a child, we had a copy of Mutiny on the Bounty that had been recorded off television. It was
the 1962 version starring Marlon Brando as Fletcher Christian, and for many
years I assumed it was the definitive version of the film. Perhaps for many
people it is. When I discovered there was an older, black and white version
(the horror!), I believed it was by necessity inferior.
I had no idea then that the 1935 film (which was itself not
the original film version) had won Best Picture, though I suppose it wouldn’t
have mattered to me much at the time. Nor did I know that Marlon Brando’s
behavior during filming 1962 was more incomprehensible than Captain Bligh’s, though
considerably less damaging to the crew. All of this knowledge came later, but I
cannot recall a time in my life when I didn’t know the story of the H.M.S.
Bounty.
Of course, that’s true of any number of movies. I remember
having to call in my parents or my brother to read the subtitles when Jabba the
Hutt was talking in Return of the Jedi.
I remember watching Raiders of the Lost
Ark on an endless loop. But the peculiar thing is that I have no
recollection of ever watching any version of Mutiny on the Bounty, and I definitely never watched it from start
to finish. I can’t even think of a specific scene
from the film.
