Movie Review – Errol #18 - “The Sea Hawk” (1940) *****

Pretty close to perfection as these things go. OK I will admit to two gripes: it isn’t in colour (the black and white photography is excellent but after watching The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex and Dodge City you can’t help wishing for colour), and Brenda Marshall is a bit flat as the female lead (she’s OK but no Olivia de Havilland – it doesn’t help that her character is a ninny: “If you believe in it, it must be right”).

That aside there is much to admire: the story flows beautifully, very well structured (it sort of combines Captain Blood with Robin Hood to the background of Elizabeth and Essex and Spanish Armada history), the production values are spectacular (a fantastic sea battle, a hellish swamp, the Elizabethan Court, the Tilbury address), the support cast superb (Flora Robson as Queen Bess, Alan Hale as a sidekick, Claude Rains and Henry Daniell make an incredible two villains), Michael Curtiz’s direction (plenty of shadows and compositions), Eric Wolfgang Korngold’s score is his finest, there is an all time classic final duel (I prefer it to the one in Captain Blood even if Daniell couldn’t fence in real life – more action, with shadows on the wall and cutting candles).

Errol Flynn is very strong in the lead role – he turns in a different type of swashbuckler in this film, a more tight-lipped school boy type, awkward with women; Errol is totally believable in the part, a tribute to his acting skill considering his persona, and shows how versatile he could be.

The Spanish are no one dimensional villains: Phillip II wants world domination and the Panama officers are obviously a bit cruel, but Claude Rains still loves his neice and Gilbert Roland’s captain is engaging, brave and likeable; the Spanish are also very smart, even the scummy spy (the way they figure out Flynn is going to Panama is genuinely clever). I’m like George MacDonald Fraser in kind of wishing the film had gone on to include overwhelming the entire Spanish Armada, but the ending as it stands is satisfying. Wonderful movie.