In the Wake of the Bounty

A weird dramatized documentary about the mutiny on the 'Bounty' and the Pitcairn Island where the mutineers settled. The drama part of it is rather bad, Errol Flynn included, but it's a curiosity piece as it's his first role. The direct documentary part of this is informative and we get a look at the life on the island along with naked Tahitian women dancing for us.

Timely to the novel, and two years before the MGM classic, an odd docudrama from an upstart Australian outfit. It got a young sailing enthusiast named Errol Flynn into acting (for the best that he left Australia to learn it afterwards, if such were the opportunities on offer there). Thoroughly amateurish, though they've a boat and topless Tahitian dancers to distract from that. The documentary (a bit of Tahiti; a lot of Pitcairn Island, its school, church, etc.) is alright enough for what it is.

The structure of this film is fascinating and seems to me to be unique (at least surely at the time it was made); switching back and forth between fictionalised/mythologised history and documentary/travelogue/ethnographic film. The highlights for me are Erroll Flynn in his film debut - from the first second on screen he oozes charisma - and the informative, poetic and humorous narration that ties the two different elements of the film together. It's almost something Orson Welles would have made.