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There are three Hollywood films claiming to tell the tale of the mutiny on the Bounty in 1789.

The first Mutiny on the Bounty from 1935 stars Charles Laughton as William Bligh and Clark Gable as Fletcher Christian. It is heavily fictionalized and focuses on the imaginary cruelty of Bligh the sadistic taskmaster. But it's a great film, so long as we don't treat it as a documentary.

The second Mutiny on the Bounty from 1962 stars Trevor Howard as Bligh and Marlon Brando as Christian. As fictional as its predecessor, it focuses on the imaginary heroism of Fletcher Christian. Filmed in Ultra Panavision, It has many beautiful moments, but they are frequently distractions from the story itself. Think "imax"... Brando was unconvincing in the role, coming across as an upper-class jerk, but he cast the longest shadow on the Pacific living for much of his life on the atoll of Tetiaroa just north of Tahiti, where his legacy is maintained by "The Brando" resort for ultra-wealthy visitors (see PS). 

The third film Bounty from 1984 stars Anthony Hopkins as Bligh and Mel Gibson as Christian. It's got a fair claim to historical accuracy, but it's not employed to uplift the drama, and ultimately the film has a strange lifeless feel to it. Mel Gibson, whose career collapsed in more recent decades under the burden of his alcohol abuse and his anti-Semitism, does some great work in this one during the mutiny itself. Unfortunately, like the film as a whole, he seems "lifeless" for most of the running time. Though this film includes more "native nudity" than the earlier versions, in retrospect from 2026, this comes across as 80s-era license in film-making rather than the naturalistic historical accuracy that was supposedly intended. This is a real problem with all of the Bounty films: how to portray the sex that was fundamental to the crisis that led to the mutiny without abusing it to make money from the film...

I ran through all three films on "fast forward" a few days ago looking for sextants and other navigation instruments and references. I spotted only one octant in the 1935 film, and it's hanging upside-down on a wall as a decoration. In the 1962 film we see Mr. Christian dusting his "golden glowing" sextant with what seems to be a lace-trimmed handkerchief. Notice the orientation of the scope, too (better in the later scene). In the 1985 version we see Bligh using a nice octant with Christian as his note-taker.

Frank Reed
PS: I have used the story of the voyage of the Bounty for many years in my "lunars" workshops, but I got on this kick to see all three films thanks to a funny coincidence on Thursday. The previous day in my "Advanced Lunars" workshop, for lack of time, I had to skip a "lunar" example which I had set in the lagoon of Tetiaroa (the same atoll where "The Bounty" resort is located). The next day I was still in "Pacific mode" so I went looking for some "light fare" about Pacific islands. I dove into a series of "typically British" travelogue shows about islands starring the actor Martin Clunes (who played 'Doc Martin' for many years). And in the first episode of his "Islands of the Pacific", he visited several islands in French Polynesia including a fascinating stop at Tetiaroa, which I was not expecting at all! That led to my Bounty-in-film "kick"...

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