Directed by Raymond Longford Production
company Crick and Jones | Produced by Raymond Longford | |
Written by Raymond Longford
Lottie Lyell Based on journals of Captain Bligh Cinematography Charles Newham
Franklyn Barrett
A. O. Segerberg | ||
The Mutiny of the Bounty is a 1916 Australian-New Zealand silent film directed by Raymond Longford about the mutiny aboard HMS Bounty. It is the first known cinematic dramatisation of this story and is considered a lost film.
Contents
Plot
The story deals with the mutiny on HMS Bounty on 28 April 1789, Captain Bligh's journey back to England, the recapture of the mutineers on Tahiti and subsequent fate of the other mutineers on Pitcairn Island. The story was structured in five acts.
Cast
Production
Filming took place in Rotorua, Norfolk Island and Sydney starting April 1916. The movie was partly financed by distributors Stanley Crick and Herbert Finlay in association with J.D. Williams and was described as "probably the most costly production yet made in Australia."
Māori actors played the Tahitians who greeted crew members of the Bounty. During shooting the unit came across a real life HMS Pandora.
Attempts were made to ensure the script was as historically accurate as possible and Bligh was not as demonised as he would be in later film versions of this story.
Reception
The film received good reviews and was a success at the box office.
When the film was released in Sydney, it was endorsed by the education department and 2,000 school children attending the initial screening.
One reviewer described it as the best Australian film ever made.
Lottie Lyell later supervised a recut of the film for the British market.