![]() Legends are crafted about their formidability, their conquest, their altruism and valor. Living by their own rules, they forge reputations. ![]() So what does the pirate epic tell us about the early- and mid-1930s? Well, according to the sampling we’re given by the List, they seem to concern people who are being hassled by society, or something to do with bureaucracy, and decides, “Fuck this,” they’ll take to the sea, make a life of their own. Notice how it came up again, in movies like Paranormal Activity and The Exorcism of Emily Rose and The Devil Inside, after 9/11. These tend to reflect periods of concern about autonomy, insurgency, a feeling like we’re being attacked and maneuvered from within by some malevolent foreign entity. Consider, for instance, the periodic resurgence of movies about demonic possession. Having a rounded sense of why a given genre saw such a boom might reveal something about the audience and time. My understanding is that there were a ton of pirate movies made in the 1930s, just as the ‘50s saw a boom in sci-fi and the ‘40s in noir, but here it’s I guess the responsibility of the List to show us a good enough sampling of the medium’s most popular genres. It doesn’t quite live up to its title, and as a sea-faring story it definitely pales next to Mutiny on the Bounty, but I can sorta see why it’s on the List. With a title like C aptain Blood, I think I went into this expecting something a little more…visceral? But it’s fine.
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