OVP: All the Brothers Were Valiant (1953)

Film: All the Brothers were Valiant (1953)
Stars: Robert Taylor, Stewart Granger, Ann Blyth, Betta St. John, Keenan Wynn, James Whitmore
Director: Richard Thorpe
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Cinematography)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

We continue on our week devoted to Best Cinematography not far from The Big Sky chronologically but definitely in terms of what we're trying to achieve onscreen.  While The Big Sky is in the wheelhouse of at least a couple decades worth of westerns, All the Brothers were Valiant was one of the many 1950's event films that were filmed in Technicolor, a hyper-satured style that made the color truly pop onscreen during the era.  I love Technicolor as a visual medium, though it's obvious that it matured from its earlier roots (where it felt almost like painted glass on the screen) to its heyday in the 1950's.  The technical achievement is particularly groundbreaking in terms of movies at sea, which is where we're at today with All the Brothers were Valiant.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about two brothers, one of whom (Granger's Mark Shore) "dies" in the film's opening scenes, while the other (Taylor's Joel Shore) takes up where his brother left off and captains a whaling ship that is sailing around the world.  Joel has recently married Pris (Blyth), who was at one point madly in love with Mark, but obviously with him being dead, that relationship is going nowhere & she marries his brother.  Little do we know, Mark's still alive and up to some mischief, essentially intent on retrieving a fortune's worth of pearls that are onshore, guarded by some of the inhabitants of the island with which they've been trading, but in order to take them, he'll have to mutiny the ship since Mark knows having the pearls onboard would cause backstabbing among the men.  The ship does mutiny, but in the end Mark & Joel join each other in the fight (not before, of course, we've seen some back-and-forth in their love triangle with Pris, including an adulterous kiss), and are able to stave off the mutiny & repair their relationship.

All the Brothers were Valiant is, spoiler alert, not a good movie.  The production of it was extremely troubled, and while we romanticize famous movies with rough productions (like Casablanca), this film is an example of when that can go wrong.  Only Taylor was originally supposed to be in the movie (Granger's part was going to go to Spencer Tracy, Blyth's to Elizabeth Taylor), and while the movie was a hit (something Robert Taylor was good at), Granger in particular wasn't a fan of the movie, and he was right.  The film's plotline is repetitive & thin (particularly for a film that's only 100 minutes long), and Blyth is terrible in the movie, acting excessively flighty & overreacting to the supposed cowardice of her husband not wanting to pursue the pearls.

The only thing that saves the film are the production values, namely the cinematography.  Oscar has a long history of nominating good movies in tech categories where their achievement is mediocre, but this is a case where a bad movie got cited for its one really strong achievement.  The moonlight shots are beautifully done on this film, and the sea battles, especially the whaling sequence, is fresh & extraordinary (and gross when you consider that whaling is heinous, but cinematically it pops here).  1953's Color Cinematography category is turning out to be something on an embarrassment of riches-I've seen four of the films (All the Brothers, Beneath the 12-Mile Reef, Lili, and Shane), and all were home runs.  However, unlike Shane and Lili (which I adore), All the Brothers doesn't have anything else to recommend it other than the cinematography.