OVP: Captain Kidd (1945)

Film: Captain Kidd (1945)
Stars: Charles Laughton, Randolph Scott, Barbara Britton, John Carradine, Gilbert Roland
Director: Rowland V. Lee
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Original Score)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Charles Laughton is one of the most unlikely of movie stars.  Portly, always, with a rough temper and consistently playing bad guys he is hardly what you'd have considered a fine choice to be one of the biggest headliners of the 1940's, but that's what happens sometimes-Hollywood gives the public what they want, and films starring Laughton is what came as a result of that.

(Spoilers Ahead) This is one of those many pictures that Laughton starred in in the 1940's (he would make twenty films during the decade), a historically inaccurate look at the life of William Kidd, a 17th Century pirate who was more famous than most and more ruthless to go along with it.  He manages to trick King William III to let him sail to India with a crew of pirates in order to bring a ship back from India.  The Indian Lord Fallsworth and his beautiful daughter Lady Anne (Britton) are taken aboard at this juncture, though Lord Fallsworth is soon murdered in an "accident" by Kidd, who then destroys the other ship, but wants to find a way to both bring back his loot from the beginning of the film (a treasure plundered from a ship called the Twelve Apostles) and also become a gentleman in the court of the king (seriously-the guy has mad social-climbing ambitions).

Thankfully for Lady Anne, who has found herself on a ship full of pirates ala Keira Knightley, she's got her own personal Orlando Bloom in the form of Randolph Scott (random thought: is there a better modern day analogy for Randolph Scott than to call him the 1940's Orlando Bloom?) as an undercover pirate who is out to avenge the death of his father, who was the captain of the Twelve Apostles.  Through some swashbuckling sword-fights and a smartly timed trip to shore, the two manage to escape Captain Kidd's clutches, incriminate him to the king, see Kidd hanged at the gallows, and then get married with a fleet of ships from the king as a wedding present.  Seriously-that's how the film ends.  It's the 1940's-what do you expect?

Honestly, the entire endeavor seems rather silly even if you disregard the gross historical inaccuracies (never mind that Kidd went back to New York, not to London before he was eventually hanged-the better question is how did Tower Bridge show up in one scene 200 years before it was actually built-was it time-traveling pirates...cause that's a movie I want to see?!?).  Laughton is always insanely watchable even if he's a giant fussbudget and a bit too worldly and proper to be believable as a pirate.  I've always found Randolph Scott incredibly dull onscreen, a bizarrely popular movie star who doesn't seem to have enough charisma to be a compelling leading man, and who at 47 is too old to be playing this part and twenty years the senior of Barbara Britton.  The film is occasionally fun (I loved the pirate quarrel at the beginning of the film), but once it becomes Laughton vs. Scott I sort of lost interest, as Laughton is always more interesting even if he's being a bit hammy and scenery-chewing in certain scenes.

The film landed one Oscar nomination, for Best Score, though not to impugn nominee Werner Janssen's nomination too much but this was the final year where basically any studio could guarantee a nomination for Best Score just by submitting at least one eligible film.  As a result Captain Kidd was actually one of 21 nominees in this category, three of which actually belonged to Janssen himself.  The music is exactly what you'd expect from a pirate film, and doesn't really compare with some of the contenders it was facing that year, including Miklos Rozsa's winning Spellbound.  I doubt very sincerely that in a five-wide field this would have been one of the ones that made the cut-the score only comes out when they need to cover some action, and relies too heavily on cliches (the light, frilly music whenever Lady Anne comes on, the ominous notes starting at least thirty seconds before we see that Captain Kidd is about to do something unspeakable yet again).  It occasionally takes away from the film, and even if it is boisterous to listen to on its own, that doesn't mean that it's any good when it comes to aiding the story.

Those are my thoughts on this pretty forgettable pirate adventure-has anyone else seen it (it's in public domain, so it's probably one of those $2 DVD's you see in a K-Mart bin)?  If not, what are your thoughts on the careers of Randolph Scott and Charles Laughton?  And anyone want to speculate why they made it so easy to get an Oscar nomination for music back in the day?