THE CRIMSON PIRATE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 29, Issue 736, 21 August 1953, Page 19

THE CRIMSON PIRATE

(Warner Brothers) BURT LANCASTER and his band of cut-throats take us for a ride in "a pirate ship in pirate waters in a pirate world" in this partly comic, partly melodramatic film about life in the Mediterranean Sea during the 18th Century. The story tells how the pirate chief rescues a democratic rebel named El Libre (played by Frederick Leister) from

the Spanish overlords who have imprisoned him in a fortress. In the process he captures a man-of-war by getting his entire crew to feign dead from scurvy, and gets involved in some acrobatic highjinks ashore in his attempts to escape from the King of Spain’s soldiers. He also falls in love with El] Libre’s daughter (Eva Bartok) and by the end of the film has decided to renounce his pirate ways and to instigate a rebellion in the name of democracy. _ The Crimson Pirate was directed by Robert Siodmak, who builds up the action in long sweeping sequences and gives Burt Lancaster, who used once to be a circus acrobat, a chance /to show off his unusual talents with hardly a faked shot. Besides the realism of its action the film has in its favour some pleasant Technicolor photography, by Otto Heller, and -the use of authentic shore settings. The cobbled villages, old stone forts, and balconied stone houses of Southern Italy, where the film was largely made, make a convincing background. Part of this film’s intention is to mock the torrid pirate romances that Hollywood usually produces. Towards the end history is turned topsy-turvy by the introduction of home-made machine guns, tanks, high-explosives, a balloon and a submarine. It’s lots of fun for the younger members of the audience, but that’s about all. :

BAROMETER FAIR: "Castle in the Air." MAINLY FAIR: "The Crimson Pirate." OVERCAST: "My Son. John."