Pandora and the Flying Dutchman (1951)
Director: Albert Lewin
Starring: Ava Gardner, James Mason
Paranormal romance dramas, a niche in movies of the late
1940 after the conclusion of World War II, receives somewhat of a send off in
popularity in a beautifully shot, Technicolor work of director Albert Lewin with
1951’s Pandora and the Flying Dutchman. With a story that was an artistic
blend of two mythical tales to form a haunting love story the film is crafted
in beautiful color and sophisticated use of camera to deliver a film that can appear
to be of a long-known fable captured in a stunning Mediterranean setting. A
glamour picture produced in the United Kingdom, its exquisite production and
appeal would carry it across the Atlantic helping to drive its two stars to
becoming Hollywood A-listers despite the film’s general lack of success.
Pandora and the Flying Dutchman is a British produced
drama about a bewitchingly seductive woman who falls in love with a hauntingly
mysterious seafarer. Opening on the scene of a recovery of two bodies on the
beach of a Mediterranean Spanish town, we flashback to the tale of two lovers
that died over the passion they shared for one another. They are Pandora
Reynolds (Ava Gardner), a sultry American nightclub singer, and Hendrick van
er Zee (James Mason), a mysterious yachtsman who recently made port offshore.
Pandora is an exotically attractive woman with the allure to induce men to perform
outlandish acts in order to demonstrate their love for her to her own
amusement. Hendrick is secretly the fabled Flying Dutchman, an ageless captain long
cursed to forever roam the sea with momentary periods ashore in search of a
woman that would love him to the point of laying down her life, thus breaking
the curse. The two immediately are attracted to each other and fall in love,
but Hendrick is unwilling to let Pandora share her affection with him, for it
would mean her death. Jealousy from a romantic rival for Pandora murders
Hendrick, but the cursed man is unable to die. Hendrick explains who he is and
that Pandora’s connection to the spirit of his long-deceased wife which
explains their attraction to each other. Undaunted concerning the foreseen consequence
of their love they are reunited in the face of a deadly sea storm that claims
both their lives.
A relatively slow building story that combines altered
versions of two mythologies, the film plays along the lines of the supernatural
while attempting to deliver the romance between its otherworldly main characters.
Directed by Albert Lewin the picture utilized a variety of simple, but highly
effective uses of camera movements, angles, and framing to manifest its
mythical story in a 20th century setting. Its camerawork is so
beautifully executed in its Technicolor magnificence that generations later made
its practices more typical in cinematic production. Due to this, viewers of
contemporary films may not recognize how quietly revolutionary it is without
knowledge of its period in filmmaking.
Written, directed, and produced by Albert Lewin altered is
the tale of the Flying Dutchman, the cursed ship ever to roam at sea,
transforming it to the tale of a man who through deadly acts is cursed ever to
rove the waters of the world until he finds a woman who would be so in love
with him that she would be willing to lay down her life. Lewin combines that
story with Pandora, the mythological woman that introduces seductive evils upon
the world, mixing it with classic myths of calling sirens, thus her singing
characteristic, and more so Aphrodite, a woman whose beauty intoxicates men to
do whatever she asks of them, no matter how foolish or deadly. Altogether is
constructed a script about two lost souls of time who find in each other their
meaning and ultimately their rest.
The highly thematic filmmaker Albert Lewin was set to direct
this production his fourth of what turned out to be only six pictures in his
career for MGM. Best remembered by his haunting adaptation of The Picture of
Dorian Gray in 1945, Lewin’s drive to have complete creative control of his
work and rising murmurs of Lewin being investigated by the House Un-American
Activities Committee MGM drew cold feet and looked to scratch the production.
This opened the door for British film producers John and James Woolf to acquire
Lewin’s project as the first release under their newly formed British based
production company, Romulus Films, in hope of producing pictures of
transatlantic appeal. Lewin found himself in a position where he would be able
to make the feature he desired with the backing to support him.
The film stars Ava Gardner and James in Mason before they
reached the heights of their stardom in roles that only improved their
cinematic standing in such a visually beautiful picture. Gardner, perhaps best
known for 1946’s The Killers where she plays a femme fatale, here
utilizes her exotic beauty combined with a mysteriously alluring way about her
to make Pandora an enigma of a character only solved by finding Hendrick. Her
performance is a bit off overall, but it makes the moments when she falls for
her true love more impactful as she is finally able to manifest affection
towards another person. Mason as a British born actor in Hollywood was still
bumbling around the business, yet to find footing coming off mostly melodramas
and a recent Universal contract. Here he delivers a haunted character in
Hendrick that feels part Shakspearian as a man wizened, yet a bit out of his
time having been cursed for centuries. Both performances with a series of
forced, distant stares to personify their troubles make it at times difficult
to become lost in, but ultimately complement each other.
Stage and screen veteran Harold Warrender serves in part as
narrator and guide of the film as Pandora’s friend and somewhat fatherly
figure, Geoffrey, a man whose passion for knowledge keeps him unaffected by
Pandora’s physical beauty. It is through him as an historian and archeologist
that we discover Hendrick’s true nature as the Flying Dutchman as we watch the
story unfold from his third person perspective. Pandora’s admirers in the
picture include Marius Goring as a man who commits suicide to profess his love,
Nigel Patrick as Stephan, a land-speed record driver that is engaged to
Pandora, and Mario Cabré as a jealous bullfighter that is willing to kill to
have Pandora. Providing the only female third person viewpoint of the story’s
drama comes from Sheila Sim’s character Janet, as a woman that sees how
destructive Pandora’s existence is to the men in the town, a fresh character
considering the male centric ensemble.
Despite all the cast, looking back the real star if the
feature is Lewin’s camerawork. It is difficult to find filmmakers of this age
use the framing of a camera in the manner we see here. Everything is subtle,
but massively effective at delivering the surrealism that obviously influenced
the making of the picture. At select times he used Dutch angles or other visual
symbolisms, which is not in itself revolutionary, but it altogether affective
subtle that makes the film flow without realizing how impactful it is. He moves
his camera while at the same time panning, keeping foreground images in the
same place in frame while mid and background move around. Unimportant as they
may sound, keeps the frame full of life in moments that emotionally driven, but
with little action.
Along with very delicate movements Lewin allows the frame to
be apart of the story without overshadowing it. He paints the frame in the way
surrealistic artists use a canvas, but never takes the audience out of the
story. To augment his visuals is excellent sound editing with use of silence or
understated ambient noise as simple as a barking dog or sounds of the sea
magnifying the actions or inactions we view on screen. This post production
work aids in creating a grander world beyond the frame, painting in the
subconscious of the audience’s mind.
Shot on location in Spain and in studio in England, Lewin
was able to bring his vision together in marvelous color for a beautiful
picture, albeit a bit slow and perhaps boring to some. MGM would regain
interest in the film and acquired distribution rights within the United States.
Premiering in the UK in February of 1951 Pandora and the Flying Dutchman
would be one of the most popular features in the United Kingdom of the year. However,
MGM held back its stateside release until mid-October to ride on the foreseen success
of Ava Gardner’s appearance in Show Boat which opened in September. In
the end the film was not a significant financial success, but did garner
acclaim for its two stars who would go on to massively successful careers
respectfully.
Pandora and the Flying Dutchman may not seem to be a film to document for significance in the annuls of cinematic history. Ava Gardner and James Mason are fine performers and the story is acceptable at best, but what it does provide is a pleasingly visual motion picture that one studying closer can tell its creative mind put a great deal of work into. Albert Lewin made only a handful of films, but what he did do was work intensely with theme, utilizing every aspect of filmmaking in a pleasing way to make his vision come through on screen. For that the feature is worth a study to be admired for its visually pleasing subtle use of the camera’s frame.
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