Movie review – Errol # 43 - “The Master of Ballantrae” (1953) ***

The problem with adapting the Master of Ballantrae is that it’s the villain who gets all the action – fighting in the ’45, getting involved with pirates, running off to India then America – while the “good” brother just stays at home and has people be mean to him including his own wife (who loves the bad brother). If you were to Hollywood-ise it the way to have done it I guess would be to made the bad brother into the goodie and the good brother into the villain, which does admittedly rob the novel of its point (i.e. that people prefer a glamorous star to a dull decent person). This adaptation tries to have it both ways – the bad brother (Errol Flynn) is selfish and mean and cheats on his fiancée with a local tramp, and the good brother (Anthony Steele) is still worthy and dull and unfairly accused of betraying his brother. But then Errol becomes… well, not really good – which means he’s not that sympathetic, though he’s not as nasty as he is in the book. Which means that the story has no real villain.

The first third of this makes some stab at following the novel; the second third is more a reprise of Captain Blood, with Errol becoming a pirate and even killing a suave French pirate in a duel. Then he returns home to get revenge on his brother and it becomes a weird sort of concoction: Errol is about to get revenge on Steele then the redcoats arrest him and sentence him to death, then Steele helps Errol escape. The only baddies are the red coats – who when all is said and done are only trying to keep order (the film goes out of its way to show that Britain and Scotland are co-existing well after 1745). Also, why should we care if Errol Flynn gets away? He hasn’t done anything heroic. Neither does Anthony Steele, either.

Errol’s performance is okay – he’s a bit too old really and has clearly done a lot of hard living (this doesn’t matter so much once he comes back from his travels but is annoying at the beginning) but he’s still Errol; Beatrice Campbell is bland as his love interest, but Roger Livesy is a delight as Errol’s sidekick. There is some loving colour photography from Jack Cardiff, bright production design (kilts, etc), and some good action. I enjoyed it I just wish there’d been a proper villain.