Marshall suggesting ur-Demi Moore; Rains post-munchkin

WARNING: SPOILERS

I thought of Gore Vidal.

In his 1992 book “Screening History,” he writes of the Anglophilia that permeated Hollywood in its Golden Age, and how it was used—he felt—to get Americans on the side of England during World War II; to get us acclimated to war. As Vidal aged, he got crankier on the topic, suggesting that FDR somehow knew about Pearl Harbor but did nothing. For all that crankiness, Vidal was exactly right on the love of England in ’30s Hollywood movies, and “The Sea Hawk” is a good example. 

Its source material is ostensibly a 1915 novel, which was made into a 1924 silent adventure film; but that was the tale of a man traduced by his brother, and shanghaied and made galley slave by the Spanish, only to find his place in the world as a Muslim warrior renamed Sakr-el-Bahr. This is more like the 1937 British film “Fire Over England” but framed by a World War II metaphor so obvious you don’t need Roland Barthes to see it.

In 1585, the tyrannical King Phillip II of Spain says the following, as dark shadows fall upon a map of the world: 

With England conquered, nothing can stand in our way: Northern Africa, Europe as far east as the Urals, then to the new world…

Midway through, we get a back-and-forth between Sir John Burleson (Donald Crisp), a loyal subject, and Lord Wolfingham (Herny Daniell), a traitor in cahoots with Spain:

Burleson: Milord, I believe that Phillip’s thirst for power can only be quenched in the English channel.
Wolfingham: Even if that were true, are my Lord Admiral and his privateers prepared to stop him?
Burleson: We are ready to try, my lord. To the last ship. And to the last man.

The last lines in the film are given to Queen Elizabeth (Flora Robson):

A grave duty confronts us all: To prepare our nation for a war that none of us wants, least of all your queen. … But when the ruthless ambition of a man threatens to engulf the world, it becomes the solemn obligation of all free men to affirm that the earth belongs not to any one man, but to all men.

So not just about Spain in 1585.

Pas de joie
It’s the usual Warner Bros. crew: Michael Curtiz directs, Howard Koch polishes a Seton I. Miller script, Errol Flynn swashbuckles in the lead while Claude Rains is evil (or is he?) in a supporting role. For love interest, it’s the new starlet of the day, Brenda Marshall, who never quite took off. The movie even gives us one of those great leading-man intros, like Rick in “Casablanca,” where we keep hearing about the guy before seeing him. Everyone’s talking Geoffrey Thorpe, our titular Sea Hawk, until finally there he is, on the prow of his ship, The Albatross: Errol Flynn in all his glory! 

Except … the reveal is a disappointment. Nothing majestic about it. And instead of his usual smiling scoundrel, Flynn’s Thorpe is all business. Not sure if it was because of WWII or if Flynn had a hangover. I suspect both, but the seriousness does remain throughout the film. Flynn swashbuckles but without his usual joie de vivre. 

Thorpe’s crew, with right-hand man Carl Pitt (Alan Hale, of course), is incredibly loyal to him, as Thorpe is to Queen Elizabeth. They’re pirates but somehow for England. Never quite got that, or what Sea Hawks were, or if they were historical or fiction. They’re so upstanding, they make piracy boring. They attack a Spanish ship, free the galley slaves (Brits to a man), and treat their captives, including Doña Maria and her uncle Don José Alvarez de Cordoba (Marshall and Rains), with deference and respect, taking them on their appointed rounds.

Of course, a romance blossoms between Thorpe and Doña Maria, with the lady protesting too much. The banter between them even includes history lessons. She sees him as a mere thief. 

Thorpe: Tell me, is a thief an Englishman who steals?
Doña Maria: It's anybody who steals—whether it's piracy or robbing women.
Thorpe: Oh, I see. [pause] I've been admiring some of the jewels we found in your chest, particularly the wrought gold. It's Aztec, isn’t it? I wonder just how those Indians were persuaded to part with it.

As she falls for him, and he her, he’s off on a wink-wink top-secret assignment for the Queen. She wants to build an armada but worries about provoking Spain. There is talk of attacking Spanish ships returning with riches from the New World, but she thinks that’s too obvious a ploy. So he offers to do it.

The plan, oddly, is to attack them on land. Equally odd: everything in the New World (Honduras, here) is sepia-toned, like in “The Wizard of Oz” but reversed. Traduced, Thorpe and his men are ambushed, and have to sweat and strain through the swamps to get back to the ship, only to be captured there. Now they’re the galley slaves. Plus Philip demands the disbandment of the Sea Hawks (apparently there are others), which is when we get that back-and-forth between Burleson and Wolfingham. The Queen, sadly, sides with Wolfingham, and though Doña Maria faints at the news of Thorpe’s capture and enslavement, for the Queen it’s like “Mission: Impossible”: She disavows any knowledge of their actions. 

Thorpe and his men eventually take over the ship and bring it to England, but Thorpe is still viewed as the enemy and must sneak into the palace. There, he gets into a classic Warner Bros. fencing duel with the villain, Wolfingham, with shadows moving across castle walls. After Wolfingham is properly skewered, Doña Marie helps him get access to the Queen, he shows her proof of Phillip’s plans, and we get our final speech about the ruthless ambition of one man destroying the world. 

On the beaches
“The Sea Hawk” began production in January 1940, a cold part of that very hot war, and was released at the end of August, by which point France had fallen and England stood alone. I’m sure those speeches, and that metaphor, resonated with 1940 audiences.

But it’s not a great movie. The joie de vivre is gone, Marshall isn’t Olivia de Havilland, and Don José, whose hair looks like it was styled in Munchkin Land, doesn’t play both sides well enough to be seen as a forerunner to Rains’ Louis. That said, Flora Robson as the Queen is excellent, while Daniell’s Wolfingham feels forerunner, or template, for Christopher Guest’s Count Rugen in “A Princess Bride.” He’s just so fucking annoying.

Really, it’s the metaphor that makes it worth watching. When Donald Crisp says, with quiet gravity and purpose, that they’re ready to stop this madman “to the last ship, and the last man,” I had to restrain myself from shouting “Fuck yeah!” It’s everything but “We shall fight them on the beaches,” a speech Churchill delivered in early June 1940.

It’s also a metaphor that never goes out of style, does it? Even if the ruthless ambitions of some madmen are simply way dumber than others.