The Buccaneer (1958)

User Rating:

6.2/10   

Director:

Anthony Quinn

Writers:

Harold Lamb (1938 screenplays)
C. Gardner Sullivan (1938 screenplays)

Release Date:

1 December 1958 (USA)

Genre:

Adventure | Drama | Romance | War

Tagline:

Piercing Drama of La Fitte - Man or Devil ?

Plot:

During the War of 1812 against Britain: General Andrew Jackson has only 1,200 men left to defend New...

Plot Keywords:

U.S. President | Pirate | War Of 1812 | Remake | Based On Novel

Awards:

Nominated for Oscar.

US TV Schedule:

Tue. Oct. 21

8:00 AM

TCM

Cast

Yul Brynner	...	Jean Lafitte
Claire Bloom	...	Bonnie Brown
Charles Boyer	...	Dominique You
Inger Stevens	...	Annette Claiborne
Henry Hull	...	Ezra Peavey
E.G. Marshall	...	Gov. William Claiborne
Charlton Heston	...	Gen. Andrew Jackson
Lorne Greene	...	Mercier
Ted de Corsia	...	Capt. Rumbo
Douglass Dumbrille	...	Collector of the Port
Robert F. Simon	...	Capt. Brown
Sir Lancelot	...	Scipio
Fran Jeffries	...	Cariba - Mawbee Girl
John Dierkes	...	Deacon
Ken Miller	...	Young Sentry

Runtime:

119 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (Westrex Recording System)

Certification:

USA:Approved (PCA #18880) | Finland:K-12 | Sweden:15

Filming Locations:

New Iberia, Louisiana, USA

Company:

Paramount Pictures

Trivia:

Facts were changed to protect 1950s sensitivities. Lafitte did have an affair with a Claybourne lady, but it was the Governor's wife, not his daughter.

Movie Connections:

Featured in Edith Head: The Paramount Years (2002) (V)

Widening the Screen, for the Battle of New Orleans

This was the last film that Cecil B. DeMille had anything to do with. He originally planned to direct this remake of his 1938 film The Buccaneer, but ill health prevented him from doing so. So apart from a brief prologue and a production credit saying the film was presented by him, DeMille left the producing to good friend Henry Wilcoxon and the directing to his son-in-law Anthony Quinn.

This version has the added attractions of great technicolor photography and Paramount's new wide screen Vistavision process. I saw in the theater when I was 11 years old and it is quite an eyeful.

Yul Brynner makes as dashing a Jean Lafitte as Fredric March did in the 1938 film. Charlton Heston repeats his Andrew Jackson role from The President's Lady which he made earlier in the Fifties. Heston though was not satisfied because he realized that he was made up to look like the Andrew Jackson we know from the double sawbuck when he was in the White House. At New Orleans he was a bit younger. But like Moses and the circus boss from The Greatest Show on Earth, you follow him to Hades and back.

The best role in the film for me though was Charles Boyer as Dominic You, Lafitte's cynical second in command. A former artillery officer in Napoleon's army, he left there and took up piracy out of disillusionment with how the French Revolution turned out. Boyer has some good and wise lines in his counsel to Lafitte even if he's drunk while delivering some of them.

After The Ten Commandments, DeMille had plans to make a film about Sir Robert Baden-Powell, the founder of the Boy Scouts and was in negotiations with David Niven to play Baden-Powell. He got sidetracked with this film and then he died in early 1959. Of course the Boy Scout film never did get made by anyone.

Although DeMille eliminated one element of the plot from 1938 the traitorous Senator played by Ian Keith the rest of the film is pretty much the same. This is hardly the real story of Jean Lafitte. When not on the action, the film does drag in spots. Maybe that's why Anthony Quinn never directed another film.

This version of The Buccaneer had one additional thing going for it. Country singer Johnny Horton had a mega hit record of The Battle of New Orleans at the same time the film came out. Both must have fed off each other in profit making. I well remember you couldn't go a day without hearing The Battle of New Orleans playing some time on the radio.

It's not history, it's DeMille at his gaudiest.