Save your money for something good and enjoyable

Pretty Good

Excellent but underrated film

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

This is the sort of thing that the studios were experts in grinding out in the 40s and 50s. The opening credits are flung across the screen in huge crimson letters. The musical score, by Franz Waxman, resembles on a lower plane the exquisite bombast of Eric Wolfgang Korngold, who was referred to by one of his detractors as Wolfgang von Korngold.That fact is only worth mentioning in passing but so is this entire movie. I liked it, especially when I saw it as a child in the Mayfair Theater in Hillside, New Jersey. I thrilled at the boom of the cannon, shivered when a protagonist was threatened with death by cutlass, chuckled when Thomas Gomez as Blackbeard swilled wine and overturned wooden tables, and stirred in my seat when the pale, prim, innocent Debra Paget was thrown into Captain Paradise's cabin with her dress half torn off.That particular incident went nowhere because the captain was Anne of the Indies, Jean Peters. As the stern, scowling pirate captain, Peters, I think all of us must admit, was a little butch but she was heterosexual. She proved that when she made chaste love to her prisoner, played by the handsome, suave, organically grown Frenchman, Louis Jourdan. That lovemaking wouldn't be so pure in one of today's movies. And I'm not so sure that Debra Paget would have remained unscathed.The plot. Some nonsense about rivalries and possessions and revenge involving Peters, Gomez, and Jourdan. Peters, having discovered that Jourdan and Paget are married, is convulsed with rage and jealousy. She maroons the two of them on one of those desert islands with nothing but sand and she sneers as she describes the horrible deaths they will suffer because they have no food or water. Actually, I think if they dug deep enough they'd find a fresh water lens. I don't know about the food situation. The best they could hope for would be crude versions of moules mariniere or zarzuela de mariscos.Jean Peters plays the role of the unlettered Pirate Queen in a blunt and one-dimensional fashion. She was really good in Sam Fuller's "Pickup On South Street." Louis Jourdan is too debonair for me. I suspect he wins a lot of good-looking women just because of his French accent. Fine for him, but what about the rest of us? Thomas Gomez is fine as the blustering, uninhibited, proudful Blackbeard. He looks as if he's wearing a fat suit. I met him in a now defunct San Francisco night club called Finnochio's. Debra Paget has very little to do except look distressed.

I saw this movie when I was very young living in Houston, Texas. I really enjoyed this movie, and I wrote to Jean Peters in Hollywood, and I told her how much I enjoyed seeing her in this movie. She sent me an autographed photo. This movie was directed by Jacques Tourneur, and besides Jean Peters in the starring role. It also stars Louis Jourdan, Debra Paget, and Herbert Marshall. It was released in 1951 in color and is 81 minutes long. Jean Peters was married to Howard Hughes. She also starred in "Viva Zapata" with Marlon Brando, Anthony Quinn, who won an Oscar for playing the role Zapata's brother (Marlon Brando starred as Zapata) (1952). And she also starred in "Captain from Castile" (1947) with Tyron Power. Since then I've been trying to find a place where it is available, but so far I have not been successful. Does anybody have any suggestions about where I can find and purchase this movie? It this comment contains spoilers, I am unaware of it.

Having tried his hand successfully at most other genres Jacques Tourneur, son of the great Maurice, moved to swashbucklers in 1950 via the Burt Lancaster vehicle The Flame And The Arrow. Having enjoyed a huge international success with Flame he followed it with a fictionalized account of Anne Boney, a lady pirate who became Anne Providence for the movie. Shot in the old (and best) three-stripe Technicolor Tourneur gets the movie off with a bang as Anne's ship captures another and quickly disposes of the crew via the traditional plank. Quickly establishing a major plot point Tourneur has her balk at dishing out the same treatment to Pierre La Rochelle (Louis Jourdan) and inviting him to join her crew. From there on it's pretty formulaic, we know Peters is going to fall for Jourdan and that he will either have a wife/fiancée or be a spy and as things turn out he is guilty on both counts. Herbert Marshall is the pick of the supporting cast as might be expected whilst James Robertson Justice is a joke as a pirate with a voice half a tone higher than Tiny Tim and a Scottish accent that would bring a blush to the cheek of Dick Van Dyke. With Tourneur at the helm it can't be ALL bad but a little more good would be nice.

The usual trappings of a pirate movie are here: sailing ships, Caribbean waters, firing cannons, powdered wigs, floggings, gold doubloons, sailors with peg-legs and eye patches, damsels in distress, etc. However, the captain of the pirate ship is a woman, which would seem to provide an opportunity for a fresh slant on an old genre. Unfortunately, Jean Peters seems uncomfortable in this part and her "toughness" never becomes more than a pose. Also, in a concession to the attitudes of the time, she isn't allowed to triumph but instead must "pay" for her usurpation of a male role by moving aside for the properly feminine Debra Paget. The result is a disappointingly conventional affair which, nonetheless, still delivers a passable hour-and-a-half of entertainment.Like Jean Peters, Louis Jourdan seems miscast since his trademark brand of Continental charm and elegance doesn't fit a role that calls for a dashing athleticism. His physique also seems a bit too thin and pale to make him a suitable subject for a shirtless flogging -- perhaps the only flogging in mainstream movies in which the victim appears to be unconscious from beginning to end. (This scene ranks 95th in the book, "Lash! The Hundred Great Scenes of Men Being Whipped in the Movies.")