Spotlight

Spotlight Date: 12-February-12
Spoiler Rating: Medium

The Buccaneer (1938)

While it is common for novelists and filmmakers to bend history for a moral or story, The Buccaneer stands out for using history to create a colorful (and debatable) definition of American hero. The movie takes place during the War of 1812 when the newfound United States took on Great Britain. All of the male characters are opportunists, including the buccaneer himself, French-born Jean Lafitte. As recounted by director Cecil B. DeMille, Lafitte ruled a tribe of bayou-dwellers outside New Orleans and made money by pillaging ships and selling the cargo to reputable citizens who liked both his air of adventure and his bargain rates. Out of respect for his adoptive homeland, he refrained from attacking ships flying the Stars and Stripes and rejected an offer to work for the British when they invaded. When the enemy advanced on New Orleans, he made a deal with Andrew Jackson, then a general, to fight alongside U.S. troops and gain pardons for any crimes he and his men had committed. Although Jackson had previously professed to despise pirates, he saw fit to use them when necessity called. The resulting victory made heroes out of Lafitte and Jackson, men whose principal talents were audacity and a willingness to do whatever it took to gain their ends.

You need a certain kind of actor to sell a brigand as a hero, and DeMille benefits hugely from Fredric March's funny, full-blooded performance in the lead. (Akim Tamiroff is also enjoyable as his loyal sidekick.) March is not only dashing, he looks equally natural ordering a mutineer to be hanged as when dreaming of becoming respectable for his society paramour (Margot Grahame). Lafitte's eccentricity makes his career choice seem like the bucking of tradition rather than the lazy recourse of the criminal mind. In this respect he is an apt match for the plain-spoken, tough-as-nails Jackson (Hugh Sothern), whom history fondly remembers as "Old Hickory." Both were the kind of men whom America needed to get solidly on her feet, at least according to this film.

While these characters are a strong point, the film's weak point rests with another character who is poorly written and poorly played by Franciska Gaal. Early on Lafitte's men acquire a Dutch woman, inadvertently and with no sexual designs (these being more clean-cut than your average pirate). She stays with them out of love for Lafitte, despite the fact that he evinces no interest in her whatsoever. It is not clear whether she is meant to be primarily romantic or comedic; in either case, she is annoying instead of cute. (The slavish fawning does not help.) When DeMille remade The Buccaneer twenty years later he wisely retooled this character. But he obviously relished the idea of a famous pirate as a patriotic hero.

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