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Not a great film at all.
The score is Ten-C-ish because .... Elmer had been well indoctrinated by DeMille to produce the sound DeMille wanted. It's an enjoyable enough listen, but easily the most kitsch thing Elmer ever composed.
There's a great public interview Elmer did sometime in the 1970s, where a student audience were discussing his work. One poor guy stood up and admitted it was his favourite Bernstein score. Everybody in the hall broke out in laughter ... including Elmer. 'The BUCCANEER?!!' he exclaimed incredulously. Still, it's Elmer.
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one of BERNSTEIN'S finest,, right up there in my top 5. the film- for me it was a seesaw , had really fine moments, and it moves, but it breaks off couriously. this could be ANTHONY QUINN taking over directing .but in the overview its a fine fim, just wish there was more of it.
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It's also a remake, from a version in the early 30's, with Fredric March, if you can believe that one, in the Yul Brynner role!
Not bad, not great, entertaining. It's been shown on TCM.
The remake's best attribute is the Bernstein score, which gives it more substance than it actually has. I saw it when it first came out, and even then I thought it looked phony, with even the battle scenes shot on sound stages. And the Battle of New Orleans, the most dramatic moment in the whole thing, doesn't have much music at all, except for the bagpipes of all those doomed British troops.
But it's a great score, even though it's like SON OF THE TEN COMMANDMENTS....
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Most of what he had to say is in the overture. A modern recording of that (or a short suite) would be most welcome.
Erich Kunzel did the Overture. Did Silva too?
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"...Fredric March, if you can believe it..."
John, what's not to believe? March was a dashing leading man in the thirties, and in fact played the hero in DeMille's SIGN OF THE CROSS. (The first BUCCANEER, of course, was a DeMille movie.)
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Posted: |
Sep 30, 2009 - 12:29 PM
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By: |
manderley
(Member)
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....."...Fredric March, if you can believe it..."
John, what's not to believe? March was a dashing leading man in the thirties, and in fact played the hero in DeMille's SIGN OF THE CROSS. (The first BUCCANEER, of course, was a DeMille movie.).....
Right you are, Preston.
I'm guessing that March was cast based on his dashing role in the big historical epic ANTHONY ADVERSE in 1936. DeMille's BUCCANEER was in 1938, not the early 1930s.
These casting games always need to be selected from actors who were around and available in those moments when the films were cast, not in hindsight. Let's see---who might have had connections to Paramount in 1938?: Ray Milland, Jon Hall, Fred MacMurray, George Raft, Gary Cooper, Robert Preston, Randolph Scott.....all good performers. But I'll take Fredric March for this role any day.
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"...Fredric March, if you can believe it..."
John, what's not to believe? March was a dashing leading man in the thirties, and in fact played the hero in DeMille's SIGN OF THE CROSS. (The first BUCCANEER, of course, was a DeMille movie.)
March is actually a very interesting study in the evolution of an actor. Despite his winning a Best Actor Oscar in Rouben Mamoulian's DR JEKYLL AND MR HYDE in 1932, he began his career as a rather stilted and florid actor. When one examines his work through the 1930s, '40s and into the 1960s -- with ONE FOOT IN HEAVEN (1940), THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES (1946, for which he won his second, and well deserved, Oscar), THE MAN IN THE GRAY FLANNEL SUIT (1956), INHERIT THE WIND (1960) and SEVEN DAYS IN MAY (1964), one is struck by how much more subtle his acting became, and with that subtlety, how much more powerful it was.
It's also very instructive to contrast that evolution with the work of his contemporary (and INHERIT THE WIND co-star) Spencer Tracy, who seemed to know and understand how to act in film from the moment he stepped in front of a movie camera. There's very little difference in Tracy's performances from the early-mid 1930s and the end of his career in 1967.
Still, irrespective of at what point in March's career he did THE BUCCANEER, it was a step back to do it, in that no one ever won an Oscar -- or, indeed, was ever seriously lauded -- for a performance in a DeMille film. DeMille was not an actor's director (and his writers not actors' writers), as his notions of what constituted a good performance were firmly rooted in the 19th century. It's a testament, then, to March's dedication to his art that he managed to not only survive having the silly DeMille spectacle on his resume but, over the next three decades was willing and able to absorb the ever deepening understanding of human behavior that lies at the heart of the actor's craft.
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There's a great public interview Elmer did sometime in the 1970s, where a student audience were discussing his work. One poor guy stood up and admitted it was his favourite Bernstein score. Everybody in the hall broke out in laughter ... including Elmer. 'The BUCCANEER?!!' he exclaimed incredulously. Still, it's Elmer.
That incident happened in 1994 or 1995 at an SPFM event. That, or else history repeated itself there.
Absolutely right. That was 1994.
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DeMille or not, this Bernstein greatly deserves an expansion of the full FSM sort, or, at least, that's what a little forbidden disc told me.
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