Still hard to beat as a pirate film - not just the story, which has never been beaten, really, for its combination of excitement, unjustice and historical background, but also the cast.Warners were a notoriously frugal, tough studio but they really rolled the dice casting Errol Flynn - no leads apart from the Australian In the Wake of the Bounty, a big expensive movie (there is production value to spare: costumes, sets, extras, battles with swarms of fighting sailors), and they gave him the lead. They were totally right. Robert Donat would have been fine, and I think Clark Gable would have been sensational even with an American accent - but other alternatives who were mooted, Brian Ahern and Ian Hunter, I think would have been very ordinary.
There really was no one ever to touch Flynn: handsome, charismatic, idealistic. His inexperience is obvious but he had star charisma by the bucketload, so it was probably worth rolling the dice (he apparently tested sensationally - also a featurette on the making of the film shows clips from The Case of the Curious Bride and Don't Bet on Blondes, both which show him a handsome charismatic presence in front of the camera).
You can see Errol growing in authority (even though they re-shot the first two weeks you can still glimpse some of his awkwardness, which is not surprising). But he handles the dialogue quite well, and is spirited in his scenes with Olivia de Gavilland (the two had marvellous, natural chemistry - I especially love the scene at the end where she pretends to plead for her uncle's life - it's like two kids mucking around which is what it probably really was like).
The story fairly spanks along - within the first 20 minutes Errol has been caught up in Monmouth's rebellion (the film is very pro-protestant without saying so - but Spaniards and James II = bad, while Monmouth and William = good), hauled in front of Judge Jeffries, shipped off to the West Indies, turned into a slave, become a doctor. Casey Robinson's screenplay is excellent - maybe the Basil Rathbone character is introduced a bit too late (not until an hour or so in) and you expect a bit more of a come-uppance for Lionel Atwill.
Support cast is strong - Basol Rathbone sleek and sexy, kind of the dark side of Flynn (Rathbone's character in this is kind of similar to what I imagine the real Flynn to have been like), de Havilland a picture (innocence mixed with a dash of sauce, noble and brave), Guy Kibee and the assorted crew (including Ross Alexander who plays the significant role Jeremy Pitt - he looks a bit withered and tragic here and in real life he killed himself soon after the film), Henry Stephenson as the decent British stick. Eric Wolfgang Korngold's music score set new standards for this sort of thing, as did the battle sequences - actually you could say it for the whole movie.
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