In the Wake of the Bounty (1933) is an Australian film directed by Charles Chauvel exploring the story of the Bounty. It preceded MGM's more famous Mutiny on the Bounty by two years and featured the screen debut of Errol Flynn, playing Fletcher Christian. Mayne Lynton portrayed Captain Bligh.
When Flynn became famous for playing pirates at Warner Bros. a couple of years later, and told people about this film, few people believed him. Flynn, a Tasmanian, had made the film in a Sydney studio although he often claimed he made it in the South Pacific as an isolated brush with acting before trying his luck in America. He would also later claim to be descended from Bounty mutineers.[2] There was at least one other film of the Bounty story prior to Chauvel's film, by Australians Raymond Longford and Lottie Lyall, filmed in New Zealand.[3][4] In 1935, some of the documentary scenes from Chauvel's film were bought by MGM and re-edited into trailers for the Hollywood film.[5]
Chauvel's film uses introductory enacted scenes showing the mutiny, followed by much more interesting documentary footage, anthropological style, of the mutineers' descendants on Pitcairn Island (this footage now has great historic value). Chauvel also used footage of Polynesian women dancers; and film of an underwater shipwreck, filmed with a glass bottomed boat, which he believed was the Bounty but was probably not. This was Chauvel's first 'talkie' and he had clearly not at this stage learned to direct actors: the dialogue is very stiff and amateurish[6] The use of long sections of documentary footage with a voice over, combined with acted scenes, is similar to the hybrid silent and talking pictures that were produced during the transition to sound. It also represents the combination of interests of the director, and he returned to documentary towards the end of his career with the BBC television series Walkabout. While the enacted scenes have been described as cringe-making to today's viewers, not only on account of the wooden acting but also the ludicrously unconvincing sets[7][8] and poorly written dialogue[9], the documentary sections retain their excellence. A return to enactments at the end of the film, with one scripted modern scene in which a child suffers because of the lack of regular ship visits which could have taken the child to hospital, probably sought to make the film a useful voice for the Pitcairn Island community, who had been generous with their participation.
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