104. Captains Courageous (1937)

Running Time: 115 minutes
Directed By: Victor Fleming
Written By: Marc Connelly, John Lee Mahin, Dale Van Every, from novel by Rudyard Kipling
Main Cast: Freddie Bartholomew, Spencer Tracy, Lionel Barrymore, Melvyn Douglas

A FANTASTIC, HEARTFELT FILM, THAT I THOROUGHLY ENJOYED

Moving ever closer to my first 101 movies watched, "Captains Courageous" makes a big bid to try and get into the Top 20 list that I'll be making when I do watch those first 101. This was a great movie, with some tearjerker scenes and one that I couldn't wait to get here and blog about.

Freddie Bartholomew plays Harvey Cheyne, a spoiled brat of a child, who's father (played by Melvyn Douglas) was never forced to be hands on with. His father, a rich business tycoon, leaves Harvey to his schoolwork and pays him his weekly allowances and glows, thinking that he's raising a proper, respectful young man. Meanwhile, Harvey has taken to blackmailing his professors at school and threatening his schoolmates to get ahead in life, even trying to pay $50 to a teacher to get him to make an exam a little easier. When Harvey runs is suspended from school, his father, after a long talk with Harvey's professors, decides it's high time to take Harvey under his wing and be the father that he never really was. He decides to take Harvey to Europe with him on a business trip, but even aboard the ship, Harvey's father doesn't have time for him, leaving him to fend for himself, while he takes care of business. After drinking six ice cream sodas, Harvey feels sick and wanting to impress the other children onboard the vessel and keep down the sodas, Harvey runs away to be alone, but the other boys chase him. Harvey winds up slipping off the deck and falling overboard!

No one notices that he's fallen overboard and he's quickly spotted by a small fishing vessel and the fisherman aboard it, Manuel Fidello, who then takes Harvey back to the main vessel. Once onboard, Harvey resorts to his snobbish ways, trying to offer money to the crew to take him, either to Europe or back to New York. The crew doesn't believe him when he tells them that his father is a rich businessman and even if they did, decide they cannot afford to spend two weeks taking Harvey back home. So Harvey is stuck aboard the fishing boat for three months, and he certainly puts up a fuss about it, refusing to help out or even eat. Eventually Manuel takes charge of the boy, convincing him to work and becoming close with the boy and Harvey soon learns the benefit of a hard day's work and what it's like to EARN a dollar.

The relationship that is established between the primary characters of Manuel and Harvey is one of the cinema's greatest and it's built like any good film relationship should be, by using dislike as the first step between the characters. I said before that Peter Warne was possibly my favorite character from the book thus far, but Spencer Tracy's portrayl of Manuel may just take the cake. The character of Manuel Fidello is one of the sweetest roles I've seen, as he talks about his dead father and how he's in heaven "fishing with the savior". It almost makes you want to go out and find a fishing boat and locate a man just like Manuel. The story is really good as well, as it flows along very nicely, building to the eventual and devastating climax. It's nice to see the transformation in the Harvey character, as well, as he goes from snobbish brat to eager helper and it all happens in the middle of the ocean, aboard a fishing vessel, with the good hearted Manuel singing his sea songs and playing his hurdy gurdy. I also want to note that this is the first movie from the '1001' book that has made me cry, and while I certainly won't say which part, readers who've seen it will definitely know which part.

RATING: 8.5/10 I knew I was pissed for a reason when I had to skip the first Spencer Tracy movie in the book. Tracy took home an Oscar for this movie, and rightfully so.

NEXT UP: Midnight Song...A chinese version of "The Phantom of the Opera"...sounds like a bore, especially considering the fact that I didn't even like Lon Chaney's version. We shall see.

February 16, 2010 2:02am