Reader Appreciation Month
Several people requested this during the TCM Contest, most of them mentioning the modern Black Swan (2010, not a remake) so I thought I'd give it a go. Methinks people will be disappointed if Tyrone Power and Maureen O'Hara don't see themselves in mirrors or have hallucinatory mental breakdowns scored to Tchaikovsky.
Maureen O'Hara and Tyrone Power in "The Black Swan" (1942)
Sometimes I feel like I'm hallucinating when I look at Tyrone Power or Maureen O'Hara in Technicolor so maybe I'll be the one breaking down?
As the movie begins we see a pirate ship called "Black Swan" and a super saturated matte painting of a blue sky (no one speaks of matte paintings anymore) and the following campy text.
This is a story of the Spanish Main -- when Villainy wore a Sash, and the only political creed in the world was --- Love, Gold, and Adventure.
The last time I remember villainy wearing a sash was the X-Men Dark Phoenix saga -- Villainy wore a gold lame sash to be precise. But back to the beginning of the movie. A town crier is shouting "All is well". Oh foolish extra, that's the kind of thing you only shout at the end of a story. Otherwise, you're basically asking for trouble!
(I'm waiting to see what color Villainy's sash is.)
Turns out sashes aren't that much of a focal point of the costumes, mostly because Tyrone is always out of his. I present the evidence...
The studio knew where his bankability was buttered.
"Nothing like a stretch on the rack to raise the thirst!"
So "Jamie Waring" (that's Tyrone) and his pirate friends loot a town, and attempt to steal some wenches only some of them get captured. Jamie ends up on the rack and there's a very fast rescue scene and plot twist which puts he and his pirate buddies into respectable positions in civilized society, attempting to fit in with the people they were just looting / threatening.
In the midst of this rapid fire plot twist, which is less "twist" than "flip" as power changes hands, he meets Lady Margaret Denby (O'Hara) and it's lusthate at first sight. He immediately threatens to rape her (not in those words but pretty much, yeah. Charming), calls her "nasty" (no, really), and then backhands her when she bites him when he tries to kiss her. Sometimes the movies take the root for the anti-hero thing too far! So she's out cold and there's this visual gag wherein he's carrying her (presumably to some bedchamber) and then tosses her aside like dirty laundry as soon as he spots a long lost friend, Captain Sir Henry Morgan (Laird Cregor).
Here's the thing. It is actually a physically funny gag in execution and timing but since he's just threatened to rape her and has verbally and physically abused her, it's... not an enjoyable laugh.
His sash is maroon. Villainy wore a maroon sash.
Only it's already clear you're not supposed to think of "Jamie Boy" as the villain. Who the villain is is still in flux. I promise not to regurgitate the whole plot. I'm almost done with the oversharing of details but I found the first half of the movie the most interesting in terms of conversation fodder and the last half more "enjoyable." The Black Swan is a good swashbuckler in the grand scheme of things but in its gender politics one can mistake it for a horror movie.
So soon Jamie and Lady Margaret are travelling in the same social circles though Jamie is now living in her previous bedchambers and doing things like smelling her pillows instead of burning them as he originally suggests.
The Black Swan won the Oscar for Cinematography. Was it the way it caressed Ty at night?
He's deeply in love with her. She's deeply in irritation with him. As co-starring pairings go their chemistry has some nice friction and they look delicious together, him all swarthy and frequently disrobed and her all porcelain with those exclamatory red lips. (Despite their opposites attract looks and demeanor both stars are actually of Irish descent and fairly close in age as movie-pairings go. He was 28 and she was 22 at the time.)
An example of their "charming" (read: horrifying) banter.
Jamie: You can lower your pistols Lady Margaret
Margaret: Unfortunately I have no pistols.
Jamie: Your eyes. I've looked into pistol barrels that are kinder.
Margaret: Get out of my way.
Jamie: Please. Do me a favor and don't make me angry. I'm trying my hardest to behave like a gentleman.
Margaret: [Incredulous] A gentleman?
Jamie: Not entirely. I only meant that my new character keeps me from seizing women and hugging and squeezing them into submission. Instead I woo them with politeness and with gifts. Here. [Hands her a locket]
Margaret: Where did you get this?
Jamie: I found it in your bed.
Margaret: You have my room.
Jamie: Yes, and you haunt it sweetly each night. Not an evening passes but I find some new and fascainting souvenir of you, a stocking, a garter, a bit of lace. [She tries to slap him. He grabs her wrist.] In Tortuga when a woman slaps a man's face, it means she wants him to grab her, overpower her, and smother her with kisses. I understand in Jamaica a gentleman must refuse such overtures.
See, when women say "no" it really means "yes!" EVERYONE KNOWS THAT.
Her "No" mean "Yes"... but O'Hara means "Maybe"In their next tete-a-tete, she actually clobbers him in the head with a rock when he is at his most genuinely friendly, so it shifts into a straight up abusive relationship in both directions. The movie sides with him; she is clearly "asking for it" and he is clearly excited by his position as the "hero" of this Swashbuckler's cover of Taming of the Shrew. Ah, the comforts of prehistoric gender politics!
To O'Hara's credit she doesn't exactly play the "no" like a "yes" though the less generous will say the ambiguity is just stiffness in line readings. Give her a break: Oscar never once nominated her, they don't give women honorary Oscars, she gave us Miracle on 34th Street and Parent Trap which gives her a lifetime pass, and she's tied up or mistreated or gagged or unconscious for half this movie! But because she is the co-star and Ty is the lead and this is the 40s it's probably no spoiler to tell you that she'll eventually do exactly as he has both predicts and commands.
A series of plot complications thrust Maureen and Ty closer and closer together. The movies most erotic and effective act is its last set aboard an evil pirate's ship. It's pretty racy for 1942. To sell their pretend marriage (very long story) Jamie actually leaps into the good Lady's bed... shirtless. Bear, or should I say bare, in mind that this is a time when even happily/legally married screen couples slept in separate beds. As the danger level increases, the movie gets better and better. The second half is quite strong as swashbuckler adventures go with well executed and genuinely exciting battle sequences and one particularly riveting lengthy swordfight between Jamie Boy and the principle villain Leech (George Sanders, yes the George Sanders "Addison DeWitt" himself. I didn't recognize him!).
Sadly, I've already forgotten the cover of his sash.
For the first half of the movie I kept uncharitably equating Tyrone Power (who I haven't seen in that many films) with a B version of Clark Gable -- much sexier but without the inarguably potent screen presence. But there's a reason Power was so popular in derring-do style films, he really sells the physicality of both the romance and the action, particularly with a sword in hand.
O'Hara has less to work with and she'll be more effective later on in the cinema when the movies catch up to her fiery willfullness and don't feel the need to mislabel it in its entirety as shrewishness. All in all it was a good watch if you can divorce yourself from the thankfully antiquated misogyny. B
P.S. This image cracked me up.
It's as if Ty came straight from the set of The Mark of Zorro (1940), "I'm ready for my next assignment. Okay, so, I'm a pirate this time?! Aye aye matey, ACTION!"
P.P.S. For what it's worth, Maureen O'Hara is still with us (yay!) but Power sadly died quite early. Just a couple of days after watching the movie I accidentally read two different things about him that made me even more curious about his filmography. The first was in the book called Fiasco about expensive flops which when talking about Cleopatra (1963) had a little diversion into biblical historic epics of the time. On Solomon and Sheba:
That 1959 extravaganza would soar to a near $5 million budget, due, in part, to the fact that its leading man, Tyrone Power, died midway through the shoot. His scenes had to be reshot with a replacement, Yul Brynner.
And in a book on Hollywood scandals (in a chapter on Liberace), there was this quote:
During Hollywood's golden age of the 1930s-1950s, among those fully or partially committed to an alternative lifestyle were Kay Francis, Claudette Colbert, Charles Laughton, Marlene Dietrich, Barbara Stanwyck, Cary Grant, Judith Anderson, Cesar Romero, Tyrone Power, Marjorie Main, Cilfton Webb, Farley Granger, George Nader, Montgomery Clift, Sal Mineo, Raymond Burr, Tab Hunter, Richard Chamberlain, Anthony Perkins, Rock Hudson and James Dean...
I had somehow never registered this about Tyrone Power. But like most bi or gay or gayish actors it's always about audience projection. Actors are never the character they're playing -- even when they're playing "themselves" and it's always about suspending your disbelief. I really don't get people's hang-ups with gay actors in straight roles. How is this different than buying Julia Roberts as an impoverished woman in Erin Brockovich or Javier Bardem as Embodiment of Evil in No Country For Old Men or Streep as Julia Child? Speaking of antiquated politics. Can we please retire the phrase "alternative lifestyle" What does it even mean? There are millions of "lifestyles" and sexual orientation is only one piece of every pie.
In short, I like Ty as a pirate, whatever he's plundering. In this case Maureen, Gold and Adventure.
For the comments: What's your favorite pirate movie? Thoughts on Ty and Maureen? Have you ever seen this one? Don't leave me to walk this plank alone.