Mutiny on the Bounty (1962) on Netflix
NR19623h 5mAdventureDramaHistory
In 1787 the Bounty sails from England to Tahiti for breadfruit saplings. Captain William Bligh drives the crew hard, and Acting Lieutenant Fletcher Christian is disgusted by a flogging.
- Netflix3.6/5
- IMDb7.2/1019,708 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes70%
Trailer
Plot summary
The Bounty leaves England in 1787 under William Bligh, who is to gather breadfruit saplings in Tahiti and carry them to Jamaica, where they are wanted as inexpensive food for enslaved plantation workers. Bligh knows the sea and is a capable officer, but he is arrogant, impatient with an untried crew and determined to finish the voyage fast. He has a sailor, John Mills, flogged early on for saying the captain took cheese from the ship's stores, and Acting Lieutenant Fletcher Christian is disgusted by it. Bligh then tries the westward route around Cape Horn to save time, and when the attempt fails and the ship turns back east he blames the crew, cuts their rations and works them harder.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Mutiny on the Bounty (1962)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Marlon Brando wrote that he turned down the lead in Lawrence of Arabia, offered to him around the same time, because he preferred going to Tahiti for Mutiny on the Bounty to filming six months in the desert.
- When MGM demanded that director Carol Reed finish the film within 100 days, he replied that he needed 139, so the studio fired him; Brando later claimed Reed was dismissed for wanting to make Bligh the hero.
- The film cost $10 million more than originally expected, and a Tahitian was killed while a canoe sequence was being filmed.
- A working replica of the Bounty was built in Nova Scotia for $750,000 and sailed to Tahiti; it took nine months to build instead of the scheduled six and arrived after filming had started.
- Marlon Brando sued The Saturday Evening Post for $5 million over an article about the making of the film that he felt disparaged him.
- Mutiny on the Bounty holds a technical first: it was the first motion picture filmed in the Ultra Panavision 70 widescreen process.
- Peter Finch signed to play Captain Bligh in July 1960, but by August the role had gone to Trevor Howard.
SPOILER
Billy Wilder suggested the ending that was shot, but Lewis Milestone refused to direct it, so George Seaton filmed Fletcher Christian's death scene in August 1962.
