CAPTAIN FROM CASTILE: Blu-ray (2oth Century-Fox 1947) Twilight Time

Director Henry King’s Captain from Castile (1947) is a sumptuously photographed but woefully underwhelming would-be epic. Lamar Trotti's lumbering screenplay makes a valiant – if misguided - effort to present Spanish conquistador, Hernando Cortéz as a benevolent and heroic figure. It helps somewhat that the man is portrayed on celluloid by the perennially ageless, dashing and physically robust Cesar Romero, looking quite manly in Charles Le Maire’s frilly costumes that would make most any other actor of his generation – save, maybe Errol Flynn - and possibly Laird Cregar - appear as very ‘dandy’ lions indeed. But lest we forget that even in setting aside contemporary Western standards of political correctness, the real Hernando Cortéz was a fairly desperate, oft’ volatile and genuinely barbaric fellow in search of fortune and glory, willfully to decimate the Aztec nation of Mexico with power-hungry dreams of ruling the New World as its undisputed dynastic despot. Yes, that Hernando Cortéz!  Alas, the self-styled Captain General of New Spain never did achieve the coveted role of Viceroy, partly because his high-hat approach to governing became mired in a legacy of corruption and murder, soon to offset the potency of his instilling fear with his bitter temperament.  Actually, Captain from Castile isn’t all that concerned with Cortéz’s legacy. Still, aligning the prospects of this movie’s star, Tyrone Power as Pedro De Vargas, with Cortéz’s marauding forces has a rather deadening effect on the perceived heroism woven into this piece.

Darryl F. Zanuck was to spare no expense on this personally supervised and elephantine spectacle, shot in three separate locations in Mexico for authenticity: the foothills near Morelia, Michoacán, Acapulco and finally, Uruapan next to a live and very active volcano. Parícutin’s 1943 eruption was kismet as archival documents from 1519-1520 account another active volcano, Popocatépetl, west of Cholula, erupting during the real Cortez’s expedition. Director Henry King shot Cortez’s march near Parícutin’s lava beds, a logistic nightmare for cinematographer, Arthur E. Arling, forced to grapple with the ever-changing natural light conditions brought about by its cinder cone’s billowing ash cloud. Arling would share his photographic credit on Captain from Castile with Charles G. Clarke. But several of the movie’s key interiors were also photographed by Joseph LaShelle, then a fledgling, who received no credit at all. Finally, Zanuck put his best composer, Alfred Newman on the project. Newman’s tenure in Hollywood in general and 2oth Century-Fox in particular is legendary. Save Max Steiner, no other composer from this golden era was more readily called upon to contribute to such a diverse spate of projects. Newman could write contemporary as well as traditional underscores; incorporating jazz, classical and folk inspirations into a seamless orchestral tapestry. In years yet to come, Newman’s excerpted ‘Conquest’ cue would become the University of Southern California’s football anthem; both it and The Spirit of Troy readily resurrected by its marching band to this day. Four months and $4.5 million later, Zanuck had his pageant; a gargantuan ‘prestige picture’ to mark Tyrone Power’s return to the movies and likely meant to shore up the possible damage done to his career by the release of Nightmare Alley this same year (more on this in a moment).

For all its visual majesty, Captain from Castile is a fairly leaden excursion. Originally budgeted and planned as a lavish ‘road show’, complete with intermission and fanfare, Zanuck eventually scrapped these ideas, curtailing his budget when road shows suddenly fell out of favor. The result; a lengthy and laborious 141 minute excursion, based on Samuel Shellabarger’s novel, first serialized in Cosmopolitan Magazine. It’s difficult to assess the blame here; Shellabarger’s prose somehow distilled into abject tedium by the usually erudite Lamar Trotti. Almost immediately production hit a snag, Trotti’s original draft involving a scene taken directly from the novel: the auto de fe torture of Juan Garcia’s mother at the hands of Dominican fray/Inquisitor Ignacio de Lora (John Burton). De Lora’s ‘examination’ of the de Vargas family and dispatch for Pedro's arrest had been sanctioned by the Catholic church, raising concerns at the National Legion of Decency and resulting in its representative, Rev. John J. Devlin (also advisor to the Motion Picture Association of America) ‘encouraging’ Zanuck to reconsider its impact. Lest we forget how ‘all powerful’ the Legion was during this time, their ‘suggestions’ tantamount to edicts.  To skirt the issue, ‘keep the faith’, but preserve this sequence, Zanuck had Trotti ‘tone down’ the depiction of torture. He also had de Lora’s appointment changed from Santa Casa (The Holy Office) to Santa Hermandad (Holy Brotherhood), the brunt laid squarely at Diego de Silva’s (John Sutton) feet and thus shifting the focus off of the church’s complicity in the Inquisition.

In keeping with Hollywood’s long-standing tradition of making major alterations to film translations of popular books – chiefly to conform to the limitations of time constraints – Trotti was also forced to distill the second half of Shellaburger’s novel into merely montage or ignore it entirely. For cathartic satisfaction, both the return of Coatl (Jay Silverheels) and de Silva’s demise were delayed until the denouement. Devotees of the novel were equally dismayed to discover Pedro’s evolution from naïve young buck to accomplished nobleman expunged; along with his expedition’s bloody carnage of the Aztecs, Pedro’s capture during the Noche Triste, and, return to Spain for subsequent intrigues at the court of Charles V. Similarly, Pedro’s youthful coquetries with Catana evaporated, along with the most barbaric of Hernando Cortez’s atrocities against the Aztecs. As example, his slaughter of thousands is depicted in the movie as a single cannon fire demolishing an idol. Purely for concision, Trotti combined the characters of Humpback Nojara, Antonio Escobar, and Botello the Astrologer into a single person, Professor Botello (Alan Mowbray) who maintained his celebrity as the astrologer. And while reviewers were quick to point out these absences in service to the times, if hardly the tale, they were also as easily to praise Trotti for managing to incorporate virtually all of the elemental plot points of the book into the screen adaptation; minus a good deal of its action, horror, bloodshed and thirst for conquest.

I will pause here to state that Tyrone Power, no stranger to period costume epics, looks out of sorts throughout the picture. I suspect Zanuck was rather hoping to get his Numero Uno hunk du jour back in front of the camera in a part reminiscent of Power’s own spectacular turn as Don Diego Vega in The Mark of Zorro (1940), forgetting first that Power, even at the age of 33, had returned from service a considerably changed man. Only ten years earlier, the actor had possessed a boyish handsomeness – ‘cute’ in counterpoint to say, Errol Flynn’s ‘ruggedness’; a quality to endear him with smitten young lasses in the first row of the local Bijou, uncontrollably mooning at the screen. Alas, Power’s post-war physical stature completely lacks this quality of wholesome masculinity; replaced by a somewhat puffy-eyed and prematurely careworn visage. I am not being unkind here to suggest that like Robert Taylor’s career at MGM, Fox’s inability to see beyond their ensconced classification of Power as strictly their resident ‘heartthrob’ did not serve the actor well as he prepared to enter a new aesthetic phase in his career. You can only play ‘the stud’ for so long, folks. Much as Hollywood has tried over the decades, with rare ‘ageless’ exceptions to this rule, ‘hot’ and ‘sexy’ doesn’t last forever. Pretending that it does, does not make it so either. Just ask Joan Crawford. And Power, by 1947 had proven he was far better than just another pretty face anyway; his breakout performance as the corrupt mentalist, Stanton Carlisle in Nightmare Alley (released the same year as Captain from Castile) illustrating his actor’s competency had definitely ripened with age.

That Nightmare Alley proved an unmitigated box office bomb was proof enough for Zanuck no one wanted a Tyrone Power who could act; the rest of Power’s 2oth Century-Fox tenure relegated to appearing in more weighty costume epics as the aging Lothario, much to Power’s increasing chagrin. Point blank: Power had outgrown these parts and, increasingly, his displeasure with appearing in them is intermittently revealed by the camera. Consulted during the picture’s pre-production phase, director/writer/producer, Joseph L. Mankiewicz suggested to Zanuck a reunion between Power and frequent (and Zorro) co-star, Linda Darnell, herein to be presented as the peasant girl, Catana. Zanuck agreed. Fate, alas, had other ideas; Zanuck’s miscasting of Peggy Cummins in the studio’s other big and bloated production of Forever Amber necessitating the part being recast with Darnell and thus depriving Captain from Castile of Darnell’s participation. Instead, Power would play off Jean Peters; not entirely a loss, though nevertheless a wan ghost flower to the earthy Darnell.

Mankiewicz also liked the idea of Fredric March as Cortez, José Ferrer as Coatl, and Alan Reed or William Bendix to play Juan García. In the end, none of his advice in these casting choices was heeded by Zanuck. As the picture was preparing to be shot on location, Zanuck did elect to employ as many indigenous peoples as his budget would allow; up to 20,000 appearing in a single sequence.  Zanuck had purchased the rights to Shellabarger’s serialized work – yet to be published as a novel – in 1944 for $100,000. But in February of the following year, Zanuck’s plans to launch full-scale into pre-production hit its first snag when the mogul read writer, John Tucker Battle’s outline and subsequent draft, co-written by Samuel Engel. Weary of its historical content, Mankiewicz forewarned Zanuck that Cortez’ conquest of Mexico ought to be presented both accurately, yet in a way so as not to offend. Mankiewicz also warned Zanuck of the tremendous expensive in undertaking such a project – particularly at the height of the cash-strapped war years. Zanuck concurred and the project was set aside for the duration of the war.

After Alfred Newman’s robust main title, Captain from Castile opens in spring of 1518, near Jaén, Spain. Pedro de Vargas (Tyrone Power), a Castilian caballero, assists in the escape of an Aztec slave, Coatl (Jay Silverheels) from his master, Diego de Silva (John Sutton) – Lamarr Trotti playing to Power’s Mark of Zorro freedom-fighter’s spirit, later resuscitated when Pedro launches into his heroic rescue of the bar wench, Catana Pérez (Jean Peters) besieged by de Silva’s revelers. De Silva is el supremo of the Santa Hermandad and Pedro’s rival for Lady Luisa de Carvajal (Barbara Lawrence) affections. Pedro befriends Juan García (Lee J. Cobb), a lusty adventurer newly returned from the New World to visit his mother. Suspecting Pedro of aiding Coatl, and aware that his high-ranking father, Don Francisco de Vargas (Antonio Moreno) is opposed to the abuses of the Santa Hermandad, de Silva imprisons the entire family on an erroneous charge of heresy. During his interrogations Pedro's young sister, Mercedes (Dolly Arriaga) dies. Meanwhile, Juan becomes a prison guard to help his mother, also a prisoner. To spare her further torture, Juan performs a mercy killing; then, sneaks into Pedro’s cell to free his hands and provide him with a sword and means of escape. Unaware, de Silva enters Pedro’s cell and is confronted by the accused in a daring swordfight that ends with Pedro ordering his abuser to renounce God before being stabbed. The surviving de Vargas clan and Garcia flee. They are forced to split up; Pedro vowing to be reunited with his family in Italy. Alas, fate intervenes yet again, Juan persuading Pedro and Catana to make journey with him to Cuba to seek their fortune and glory.

The adventurers sign on to Hernándo Cortes’ (Cesar Romero) Mexican expedition. Now, Pedro befriends the kindly Father Bartolomé (Thomas Gomez), the mission’s spiritual adviser. In confiding to the priest de Silva’s murder, neither Bartolome nor Pedro is aware de Silva has, in fact, survived his wounds.  Nevertheless, Bartolome reveals he has received an order for Pedro’s arrest. Knowing what the Inquisitors are, the priest instead tears up the order and gives Pedro contrition in prayer for de Silva’s soul. Arriving at Villa Rica, Cortez is warmly greeted by envoys of the Aztec Emperor Montezuma, who hope to bribe his return to Spain. Instead, Cortez barters with these ambassadors, promising them untold riches if they side with him. Meanwhile Catana, doubtless aware of Pedro’s lingering affections for de Carvajal, pleads with the charlatan, Doctor Botello (Alan Mowbray) to provide her with a magic potion to make Pedro fall in love with her instead. Botello gives Catana a ring, supposedly possessing such magical properties. Unaware the ring holds no sway over Pedro’s affections Catana resists her beloved after he genuinely offers her a kiss, suspecting it is all the ring’s doing and none of his. Regardless, Pedro persists and is successful at convincing Catana his love is genuine. The two are wed shortly thereafter.

Cortez tramps into Cempoala, receiving yet another bribe from an opposing Aztec deputation. The gemstones are placed in a teocalli. As his most favored confederate Cortez appoints Pedro to stand guard over them. Alas, when Pedro momentarily leaves his post to deal with a drunken Juan, the precious jewels are pilfered by captains opposing Cortez. Pedro is framed for thievery but given a day’s grace to recover the jewelry. He is ably assisted by a loyal crewman, Corio (Marc Lawrence), but badly injured during their escape. For his conspicuous bravery, Pedro is promoted to captain. Now Cortez destroys his ships to detour any further feeble attempts at retreat by his men.  Arriving at Cholula, Cortez’s army is met by Montezuma's nephew, a prince (Ramón Sánchez) threatening total annihilation unless they agree to depart in peace. When Cortez protests he has no ships, the prince reveals more have arrived. Cortez realizes his rival, Cuban Governor Velázquez, has already prepared a force to rise up against him. Painted into a corner, Cortez elects to take half his men and attack the stronghold at Villa Rica, leaving Pedro in command of the rest of his army.

Returning victorious, Cortez is flanked with reinforcements loyal to the King’s emissary; none other than Pedro’s arch nemesis, Diego de Silva, newly arrived to impose the Santa Hermandad on Mexico. Father Bartolomé reminds Pedro of his vow, strengthened by Cortez’s appointment of Pedro as de Silva’s personally protector. Alas, when de Silva is strangled later this same night Pedro is immediately suspected of the crime and sentenced to hang for murder. Miraculously, just before the execution Coatl confesses to the crime. Unbeknownst to Catana, who believes a mercy killing is Pedro’s only way out of the indignation of being publicly hanged, she stabs him. The wound is superficial and Pedro recovers, exonerated of any wrong doing as Cortez and his army march toward the Aztec capital, the plumage from a rumbling volcano portending of an ominous bloody conquest we mercifully never witness as the screen fades to black and the end titles appear.

Captain from Castile is ambitiously mounted. Yet it fails to entirely gel as an entertainment. Bathed in glossy hues of 3-strip Technicolor and tricked out in all the vintage finery James Basevi and Richard Day’s art direction, and, Thomas Little and Walter M. Scott’s set decoration can provide, the picture nevertheless is dramatically colorless and suffers from a sort of critically induced ennui. The historical figures presented before this stark natural beauty of Mexican landscapes are hermetically sealed corpses, not human, embalmed in and by their platitudes and grandiloquent gestures. The whole picture plays like an elaborate Madame Tussaud’s waxworks or Disney audio-animatronic exhibition elaborately staged in luridly lit dioramas. Personally, I never found Tyrone Power best served by donning these period costumes. Errol Flynn – definitely, and, to a lesser degree - Stewart Granger: men who could pull off the codpiece and flouncy collars and cuffs by their presence and sheer animal magnetism.  But Power? He is much too ‘pretty’ to the point where he acquires an effete patina of masculine unease, thoroughly lost at sea in his fancified britches; the costumes wearing the actor instead of the other way around. And yes, I do realize my assessment here flies in the face of millions of screaming female fans who thought Tyrone Power the cat’s pajamas even when he wasn’t wearing any. But next to an Errol Flynn, Power’s prowess as the purveyor of period costume epics falls apart. Save a few earlier indulgences, notably, 1940’s The Mark of Zorro, and arguably, The Black Swan (1942) Power herein really lags behind in the ‘manly’ graces department.  He’s too fine-boned to be the rough and tumble Pedro, standing tall next to Cesar Romero’s robust reincarnation of Cortez.

Henry King’s direction is too stolid to be enjoyed as anything better than an exercise in moving tableaus. I suspect King became enamored with the lushness of Mexico and simply believed that by fortifying his screen with its superb wildernesses all of the conventions of cinema story-telling could be virtually set aside – or rather, ignored – for whole stretches of highly static exposition set against their backdrops. As I stated earlier, no one can accuse Captain from Castile of not looking every bit the sprawling epic Zanuck had envisioned as Ty Power’s backlot homecoming pièce de résistance at 2oth Century-Fox. The picture lost money however: no way for its staggering $4,500,000 budget to be topped by a rather paltry $3,650,000 at the box office. So, where did the fault lay? Difficult to say, although we must consider that, like virtually all other reigning moguls in Hollywood then, Zanuck failed to anticipate a distinct change in the wind of audience tastes immediately to follow the end of WWII.  What had worked before the war now possessed a decidedly tinny clang of staleness. So too, the cycle in costume dramas was coming to an end. Finally, Ty Power was not the star he had been prior to enlisting. Something about the man had changed; an unsettling maturity caught in those once devilishly playful eyes, now sobered by the experiences of war. What Captain from Castile might have been had it come on the heels of The Black Swan, with a Ty Power still magnetically full of himself, instead of the exacting and careworn fellow he emerges as at the decade’s end, we will never know.  Alas, what is here is not entirely an entertainment as much as an exercise in studio-sanctioned spectacle; glossy, but dull and dramatically underwhelming.  

I would personally like to take a shovel, a brick and a baseball bat to the heads of the former executive brain trust at 2oth Century-Fox responsible in the mid-1970’s for junking virtually all archival pre-seventies original camera negatives and separation masters; rumored to have been floated onto barges and sunk off the coast of California simply because Fox’s vault storage was getting just too cluttered up with history. As a studio known for its lush and occasionally garish saturation of Technicolor throughout the late thirties to early fifties, such short-sighted sacrilege can never be forgiven. I intend to remain bitter about this. Fools! Damn fools!  Given this dearth, with badly re-composited second generation Eastman prints the only ‘workable’ alternative, Captain from Castile looks startlingly good on Blu-ray from Twilight Time. Let us be clear. It will never look like the movie as originally shot in glorious Technicolor. Does it present well in 1080p? Yes. For those unaware of what vintage Technicolor in general, and Fox’s use of it in its particular prime ought to be, this newly incarnated effort from Fox, distributed via Twilight Time, will hold up under average scrutiny. At times, it will even ‘almost’ fool keener eyes into suspecting perhaps a few thin strips of surviving 3-strip Technicolor were newly unearthed from under someone’s bed or neatly tucked away in an upstairs attic. Alas, no. Not true.

I will say this: what is here is as good as it is going to get and, for fans of this movie, pretty darn appealing besides with color density during exterior sequences revealing good, solid – occasionally robust – hues. Darkly lit interiors are the real problem here; plagued by contrast issues that occasionally distract. No reason to lament or go any further. It is – tragically – what it is. The vintage audio is 2.0 mono and sounds adequate, if hardly exceptional. What can I tell you? Posterity was not exactly Fox’s thing back in the day. TT gives us Alfred Newman’s score on an isolated track and more fun n’ goodness liner notes from their resident writer, Julie Kirgo (always a pleasure to read). In addition, we have also been bequeathed all of Fox’s ole DVD extras ported over for this release: an audio commentary from Rudy Behlmer, Jon Burlingame and TT’s Nick Redman, two featurettes, Tyrone Power: The Last Idol, and, Tyrone Power and His Leading Ladies and an original theatrical trailer. Bottom line: no more could have been expected of either Fox or TT. Captain from Castile looks good. Thanks to those former unnamed idiots at Fox it will never look great again. Regrets…and yes, I feel justified in my renewed outrage here. So should you.

FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the best)

3

VIDEO/AUDIO

3.5

EXTRAS

3.5