THE SEA HAWK
1940
Directed by Michael Curtiz
Written by Howard Koch and Seton I. Miller
Having made that Tasmanian devil, Errol Flynn, a star with 1935's Captain Blood, it was natural that Warner Bros. announced—that same year—his follow-up piratical adventure, sourced from the same author, Rafael Sabatini, with the added benefit that a silent adaptation of Sabatini's novel had already proven its commercial appeal a decade earlier. And then, for various reasons (few of them readily apparent), The Sea Hawk... sat there. Flynn stayed busy, as did Captain Blood's director, Michael Curtiz; indeed, they were often busy together, collaborating on seven more films in the meantime. Some of these stretched Flynn into different genres. Most tapped his preexisting matinee hero strengths, but in a terrestrial mode, first testing their working relationship to its breaking point with The Charge of the Light Brigade, one of the 1930s' most infamous films*, but nevertheless moving forward to cement Flynn as the paramount action idol of his day in The Adventures of Robin Hood. Ultimately, Flynn and Curtiz came together on The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex, barely even an example of the latter kind of picture—and still a masterpiece that benefits, almost unfairly, from having its devil-may-care earl portrayed by a swashbuckling hero, despite having no onscreen swashbuckling heroism—and that might be more important to The Sea Hawk than history explicitly records, because I suspect that the Whitehall sets they'd built for the abode of Elizabeth I might've been a major factor in The Sea Hawk's resurrection, while also turning it into a movie you'd never recognize as based on either the novel or the 1924 film, except for the fact that it was still called "The Sea Hawk," plus a momentary flicker of recognition during the thirty minutes or so, involving being chained to an oar on a Spanish galleass, where this Sea Hawk very vaguely resembles the earlier Sea Hawk's plot, though it's placed in practically the opposite part of the movie and has the opposite outcome.
Not being based on Sabatini's Sea Hawk was no major loss (both Sea Hawks run slightly over two hours, but the first one dawdles for 33 minutes not only on land, but in Cornwall), and what Warners called "The Sea Hawk" was initially a screenplay by Seton I. Miller, inspired by Francis Drake, called Beggars of the Sea (so you can imagine why Warners changed it), dropping Drake's slaving, circumnavigation, and occasional tyrannical viciousness in favor of a tight focus on his exploits during the 16th century Anglo-Spanish conflict, providing the material of a fictional hero that allowed Miller to compress events from 1572 to 1588 into a single adventure. Or if Miller didn't do all of that, then the polished smoothness was the result of the final draft provided by Howard Koch; what Koch definitely did was look around at the world in late 1939, and see in the Anglo-Spanish conflict a fit-to-purpose allegory for the present British conflict with another continental power seeking domination. Or Koch had seen Korda's 1937 Fire Over England that had done precisely this three years before—so points for prescience (that title's something), but not for timing—and though no giant hit even in its day, it's never been entirely forgotten thanks to the more famous movie we're discussing now, specifically by way of a most regal Flora Robson, who'd played the royal protagonist in Fire Over England and was now hired by Warners for the exact same job. Armed with an Elizabeth and with Elizabeth's house, this new Sea Hawk underwent fast development, while Flynn and Curtiz did Virginia City before regrouping for the movie Warners announced half a decade earlier. But then, you have to hand it to The Sea Hawk for sickeningly good timing: intended to remind the British that they'd triumphed over daunting odds before, but put into production when France and the British Expeditionary Force were both still intact, it only premiered on July 1st, 1940**, not a full month after Dunkirk had seemed to make the prospect of Britain's surrender—even of a German armada—a terrifying possibility.
Thus we begin in the chambers of Phillip II (Montagu Love), who declares that soon the enormous map on his wall shall no longer be a map of the world, but simply a map of Spain, as his shadow malevolently sweeps across it; this is a gesture familiar enough from Curtiz (Curtiz loved his shadows thrown upon the far wall), but it was perhaps a gesture never more weighted with significance—unless by the giant shadows a pair of swordsmen cast later on in this very movie. Phillip's schemes conform poorly to history: the English had effectively declared war on Spain already by supporting the Dutch, one factor in the Anglo-Spanish conflict amongst many that won't be acknowledged in a movie that instead, and I suppose wisely-enough, fixates monomaniacally on the notion of an all-consuming Spanish imperialism opposed in the name of freedom by the most morally-unchallenging English privateers imaginable, albeit somewhat at the cost of making it look like it was the English starting shit by being pirates and terrorists. Regardless, in pursuit of a subterfuge against Elizabeth whilst the finishing touches are put upon his Armada, Phillip dispatches Don José Álvarez de Córdoba (Claude Rains) to London to pretend to continued friendship with his Protestant sister-in-law (don't hold your breath waiting on the words "Protestant" or "Catholic" to be uttered in this movie either, though an Englishman will refer to Spanish "heathens," once). Alongside Córdoba travels his niece, María (Brenda Marshall), and Córdoba, rather blithely, dismisses the worries of the galleass's captain, López (Gilbert Roland's), that any of those English "sea hawks" might dare attack a ship of the king of Spain (apparently not what's been happening the past several years?). Lopez's anxiety obviously turns out to be more justified than Córdoba's obliviousness, when across the horizon springs the Albatross, the galleon (they're different) of Geoffrey Thorpe (Flynn), who's delighted to have found such a prize.
Let's pause. This is, after a fashion, ballsy: Captain Blood had withheld its big naval combat scene for its finale, and here The Sea Hawk is, just throwing an even bigger one at you immediately, holding nothing whatsoever back as far as this particular stripe of action goes, as it's also the last proper ship-to-ship battle in the entire film (called The Sea Hawk). It's an act of supreme confidence, and let's not be coy, it'll pay off; while it does have a tightly-built narrative and indeed, "a story," it's somewhat worthwhile to think of The Sea Hawk as a film of sequences, existing to link action concepts together. One could go a little further, because one could semi-accurately describe The Sea Hawk as Flynn and Curtiz's greatest hits collection, with this bold opening salvo avowedly patterned upon Captain Blood, down to Curtiz reusing a very specific shot (I don't think the actual footage) that you certainly wouldn't have forgotten from Captain Blood, when a piratical grappling hook catches a defender's face instead of his ship.
But it is bigger, and more sophisticated, starting with the superlative modelwork (models the size of cars out there on Warners' watertank) and some impeccable integration of that modelwork into the auxiliary below-deck sets and the awe-inspiring full-sized primary ship "sets." Now, I shouldn't say "full-sized"—they are much smaller than the kind of vessels they represent—but they are surely enormous enough for you not to notice, "props" that essentially are big-ass boats, also plopped down into that big watertank, capable of some limited (again, not that you notice it's "limited") lateral motion to effect the boarding and, beyond this, capable of servicing the illusion of being "on the ocean," so that while there's a perpetual rolling movement here it becomes rapidly clear that it's the ships moving against the backdrop, not the camera, though DP Sol Polito is fairly-rigorously following suit when he doesn't have access to a set that's simply rocking on its own.
So let's back up. I believe—I have obviously not seen all his movies!***—this could be Curtiz's single best-directed picture. (And, though Elizabeth and Essex tempts me, it is also my favorite. No, I'm not forgetting anything I have seen.) Anyway, this opening, prologue, first act, or whatever, is some incredibly robust stuff, Curtiz and Polito roaming over first the Spanish vessel then the Albatross, but with great discipline imposed upon those roamings by editor George Amy, so that the movements all feel motivated even while they allow us to explore and understand the geographies of each ship, while also meeting the personalities aboard we haven't met yet, while also already establishing, with pure visuals, the stakes of the film's grand geopolitical struggle when Amy cuts to those auxiliary sets I mentioned, in a well-judged series of shots, essentially describing a descent into hell, that makes it undeniable that the badminton frolics of María and her maid (Una O'Connor; this strand of the story is lifted pretty much intact from Robin Hood) on the top deck are happening just above, and in obscene counterpoise with, the slavery that powers their empire's prosperity. (They would call it woke: later, Geoffrey pointedly reminds María that the Spanish stole this gold first. Well, they might not call it that woke—the only slaves in this movie are white—though we later see Spaniards treat their colonized Panamanians with heavily-showcased contempt, even when they're serving faithfully.)
Then the Albatross arrives, with a splendid introduction of Geoffrey's crew, and an iconic introduction of Geoffrey himself (first seen quietly dominating a whole composition but you'll only notice if you're looking for him; thereafter everyone looks up and off-camera to their olympian captain, whereupon he's slammed right into the film by a brusque cut), and the battle begins. The craftsmen are simultaneously clarifying this chaotic combat while permitting it to remain chaos—the sheer textures of these epic shots of a thousand extras fighting through the rigging and across the deck are intoxicating (and not for the last time, I'm frankly glad this is in black-and-white rather than Technicolor, and it certainly unleashed Curtiz and Polito). It's invigorating chaos, too, like the snapping of the galleass's oars or the stuntmen falling into the watery abyss between or that aforementioned face-hook, and the battle, for a kicker, even ends by way of Geoffrey's cleverness rather than his sheer brute force. For the successful reduction of all this overwhelming complexity into sheer matinee pleasure, I really don't even want to suggest it's any less-than-perfect... though if it is, I'd say I wish they had one more piece to complete the design, an itty-bitty insert shot after Marshall sees the freed slaves, being in turn seen by Flynn, since Geoffrey notes this later as the moment he knew he was falling in love with her, and maybe it's when María fell in love with him. Though I would like to mention the wonderful composition of María looking out of her Albatross stateroom while Geoffrey frets on the top deck wondering if he ought to try making conversation with his still-hostile prisoner, which I'm reasonably convinced got homaged in The Little Mermaid.
The movie moves faster than I do: Geoffrey escorts his prisoners to their destination, and is performatively chastised by his queen, but he has a cunning plan for her, a version of Drake's 1572 raid on the overland isthmian gold route. Unfortunately, it goes more like Drake's 1597 raid on the overland isthmian gold route, for Córdoba and his secret ally in the English court, Wolfingham (Henry Daniell, doing his best Basil Rathbone), have discovered his aim and already sent word ahead to Panama. (María would have intervened, but she was moments too late, and back to "Curtiz's best-directed picture," the series of dreamy dissolves of the Albatross sailing away while Geoffrey looks back "at" María, obviously not actually seeing her but still generating the emotional reality that he is, sells this romance, even if it's not the movie's very first priority.) Geoffrey and his crew, trapped, are enslaved themselves; but this is not the end for Geoffrey, and after a daring galley mutiny, it's back to England to warn Elizabeth the Armada is coming.
There's only two things here I don't outright love. The first is that it kind of doesn't have any strong locus for its villainy: Córdoba is remarkably unsleazy, even loving his niece enough to regret hurting her (and Rains is underutilized generally); Wolfingham is sleazy, but he's landlocked and accordingly isn't in the movie that much; and nobody really interacts with Geoffrey more than twice, so while our evil Spaniards are individually imposing and competent, and varied in their evil temperaments, they're a slightly amorphous enemy. The second thing needs to be prefaced by saying I adore Flynn's performance in this—effectively a more rounded version of Robin Hood, brash but modulated, more watchful and intelligent, and full of subtly-funny expressions to go along with more overtly-funny Flynnian mugging—and my adoration includes his romantic reticence, which is charming and subverting of the ol' Sherwood swagger, but less so when a Greek chorus of subordinates (Alan Hale and others) irritatingly exposits this trait aloud. Yet I do still love the whole "Alan Hale and others" gang, and all their efficiently-supplied stock types; fortunately, this isn't even a whole scene.
Virtually everything else is perfectly wonderful, Robson being a particular highlight and one major reason the landbound second act-like passage doesn't lose energy. Robson is distinctive from her previous Elizabeth, now leaping headlong into an idealized embodiment of England, boasting the same rakish dynamism as her favorite privateer. And because this movie, for its import, remains a silly-larky good time, let's also say I enjoy its explicit equation of Flynn's swashbuckler with his monkey.
The "film of sequences" resumes in Panama, with its ambush-of-Geoffrey's-attempted-ambush in a taut and claustrophobic vignette of jungle warfare (punched up further by "hot" sepia tint) that climaxes aboard a ghostly, corpse-strewn Albatross, followed by the diamond-hard thriller of Geoffrey's slave rebellion, with Amy guiding us analytically through its brutal stealth procedural in near-silence and Polito capturing an almost dreamlike image of shirtless men shining under the toplighting moving flocklike across black wood around Flynn; this is where we give obeisance to Erich Wolfgang Korngold, often aboard for Flynn's adventures, and, as an established classical composer, one huge "get" for Warners back on Captain Blood, hence sometimes accorded uniquely-glorifying screen credits (here his frame-dominating credit comes right before Curtiz's). Too much can be made of Korngold, maybe, insofar as his Flynn movies would still "work" without his music (for all his influence on Williams, his scores aren't as structurally crucial as Williams's could be), or, cf. The Prince and the Pauper, they don't work any better with it.
But The Sea Hawk comes the closest to making him as important as any other department head, especially in the rhythmic escape sequence, and its ecstatically joyful denouement of the main theme breaking out into an earnest banger of a sung shanty, "Strike For the Shores of Dover." I'm not sure my favorite musical gesture, though, isn't in the jangling xylophonics of the swordfight once they get back to those shores, when Geoffrey confronts the traitor Wolfingham. That brings us back to "greatest hits," specifically and obviously the climactic duel from Robin Hood. If you prefer Robin Hood's, that's wholly reasonable; but this one builds on that one's most transporting moment, involving the duellists' shadows, to make it something like the concept of the entire setpiece. Now, it was more of a happy accident: unlike Rathbone, Daniell couldn't stage-fight for shit, thus his stunt double had to be as obscured as possible, and Curtiz's solution was darkness and chiaroscuro, which Geoffrey provides by cutting down candlesticks for no really obvious tactical reason, though it sure creates cool atmosphere. It'd be happier still were it a long-gestating plan—though the shadows duelling across that giant historical tapestry from Elizabeth and Essex for the soul of England is obviously beyond reproach—because it gets so close that you perceive the gap between what it is and what it almost is, a full-on graphic abstraction of the violence upon which the fate of the world hangs. But it boasts some impressive choreography—Flynn throwing furniture at his adversary, fencing backwards down stairs, and so forth—while that contrasty black-and-white elevates it to something even more special than Robin Hood's similar finale.
So pure excellence, all told, that ends strangely. The Sea Hawk is a film about the first Armada, where the Armada is still coming when it's over. (Imagine Star Wars ending with the Rebels getting the Death Star plans, but that's it.) Victory is not assured; danger hangs over the film even as Robson gives an aggressively ahistoric speech, in this case not unlike the ahistoric speech she gave in Fire Over England. This Elizabeth, though, has been an equivocator up till now—a Chamberlain with Churchillian characteristics, perhaps—and it's not too tough to see in The Sea Hawk the British finally growing a spine in September 1939, nor is it much tougher to see in its Elizabeth a criticism of America's own present-tense equivocations towards the war in Europe, with Geoffrey suffering for her political reluctance to bring the full might of "England" to bear. But while we "know," intellectually, that the Armada burned and sank, the film leaves things pointedly unsettled, as they then remained unsettled on the other side of the screen. As that real-life feat of heroic British seafaring had done a month before, The Sea Hawk offers hope, but with the promise of great hardship ahead; in the summer of 1940, I don't think another ending would even feel right.
Score: 10/10
*Look it up if you like. If I started, I'd spend two paragraphs on its obscenity.
**Still, while it is not rhetorically pleasing, I can't find its U.K. release date and sources even disagree on when its U.S. release was (IMDB claims August 10th), despite this being seemingly trivially knowable.
***He made 102... in America.
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