CAPTAIN KIDD

New Zealand Listener, Volume 15, Issue 376, 6 September 1946, Page 32

CAPTAIN KIDD

(United, Artists)

Fyou want to get the children off your hands some wet, afternoon these holidays, you could do worse than send them to

this. But adults are’ entitled to expect something better than this kind of kiddstuff from .n actor like Charles Laughton, who, in case you have forgotten, was once one of the greatest artists on the screen. These days he seems content to play all the time to the gallery, galumphing through his roles with the minimum of creative effort and the maximum of mugging. It isn’t entirely his fault, of course. In the present case if they had given him a better story he might have turned Captain Kidd into a three-dimensional character instead of making him just a miserable Cockney rascal almost entirely lacking in depth. Failing this, the producer should have tossed artistic pretensions to the winds and gone all out for blood and thunder, as befits a tale of piracy on the high seas. Instead, the film. gives one the impression of being curiously inhibited and disappointingly static. It never really moves, and when it does it mostly moves across a map, which is flashed on the screen with irritating frequency, instead of across open water. And in several aspects the plot is needlessly complicated and obscure; all that business about the ship "The Eight Apostles," for instance: how exactly did Kidd pull off that coup? I say "reedlessly" because this was one of the occasions when Hollywood need ‘not have hesitated to simplify history in the interests of entertainment, since history cannot tell us anything. very accurate about the real Captain Kidd. /Not that there isn’t a good deal of simplicity about some aspects of the story: for instance, the convenient habit Kidd has of writing his list of intended victims in a little book and of leaving a skull-and-crossbones flag lying about in a drawer in his bureau where it can be found by the spy who has got on board qbis ship in the king’s- interests (Kidd, you see, is sailing under false colours, having persuaded King William to give him command of a ship). Equally convenient is the spy’s habit of wearing his family crest round his neck so that (continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) his identity can easily be discovered. And it is convenient for the romantic interest when the Governor of the Indies brings his beauteous daughter (Barbara Britton) aboard Kidd’s ship and is promptly murdered, leaving the maid alone among the cut-throat crew, with no one to protect. her but the daring spy (Randolph Scott). They start calling one another by their first names at their second meeting, and one scene later are embracing; but after all, there’s nothing like dahger to bring people together. It is probable that Laughton had quite an amusing time playing Captain Kidd; he certainly gives that impression, as he pulls some of the tricks of Captain Bligh out of his locker, and even some touches reminiscent of his Henry VIII. But it would, I think, have been better for the film if an actor of less reputation had been the star: we might then have had a more straightforward adventure yarn and not so much kidding.