Sea Hawk, The

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Watch "The Sea Hawk" because it's a stirring adventure saga, to be sure, and one of Errol Flynn's swashbuckling best. But if you see it for no other reason, see it for Erich Wolfgang Korngold's music. Few other scores have had as much influence on the direction of epic film music as Korngold's for "The Sea Hawk." While Korngold, a trained classical composer, was probably most influenced by the early tone poems of Richard Strauss, it's Korngold's inspiration that can be heard today in everything from "Star Wars" to "The Lord of the Rings."

Released by Warner Bros. in 1940, "The Sea Hawk" reunited Flynn with his favorite director, Michael Curtiz. They had already joined forces for such popular successes as "Captain Blood," "The Charge of the Light Brigade," and "The Adventures of Robin Hood," and the Warner studio was anxious for another hit.

The studio got one.

This time, spurred on by the success of "Robin Hood," especially, and with sets and costumes left over from Flynn's previous costume drama, "The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex" (also with Curtiz), the powers that be at Warner Brothers were willing to spend more money on the production than ever before, enabling bigger sets and a bigger cast than any of Flynn's prior films had enjoyed.

But WB elected to go with black-and-white rather than color this time out, which at first glance may seem an odd choice, considering that both "Robin Hood" and "Elizabeth and Essex" were in Technicolor. But I suspect that the studio was trying to duplicate the success of their first pirate epic with Flynn, "Captain Blood." Reader Thor Klippert wrote in to observe that "At least part of the decision to shoot 'The Sea Hawk' in black-and-white must have come from the fact that a Technicolor production wouldn't have been able to make use of stock footage from previous swashbucklers. The production benefits greatly from some audacious (not to say outrageous) 'lifts,' most notably in the opening battle sequence. Not only do some of the clips employed date back to the silent era, but some 60% of the on-deck action is straight out of Curtiz & Flynn's own 'Captain Blood,' and some of the actors are actually intercut with actions they performed six years earlier." Thank you, Thor. Whatever the case, the black-and-white looks good and lends a proper old-fashioned flair to the proceedings.

The movie is loosely based on the title of a novel by Rafael Sabatini, a book that had already been made into a movie in 1924. It seemed tailor-made for Flynn, but because Hitler was out to conquer the world in 1940, Warner Bros. thought that a good patriotic film might be order. Thus, they went with a script by Seton I. Miller and Howard Koch that used England's war with Spain in the seventeenth century as an allegory for the war between the free world and Nazi Germany in the mid twentieth century. The film became a propaganda plug for liberty and little remained of Sabatini's novel except the title, which may have been enough. It's a very good title.

The story opens in Spain, 1585, where King Philip II (Montagu Love), the stand-in for Hitler, is plotting to conquer the world with the help of a vast armada. His first target is England, whose privateers have been harassing his gold-laden ships from the Americas. These privateers are known as "Sea Hawks"; loyal to England's Queen Elizabeth (Flora Robson), they plunder the rich Spanish ships as the Spanish head back from plundering the Native Americans. The Sea Hawks share their spoils with the Queen and make a good profit for themselves in the bargain.

Flynn plays the dashing Captain Geoffrey Thorpe, the best Sea Hawk of the lot. His ship, the Albatross, is faster and more maneuverable than the big Spanish vessels, and his gunners are more deadly. One-on-one, Thorpe can easily outmatch any ship he sets out to loot, and according to his own count that would number in the many dozens. Thorpe is one of Flynn's finest heroes, always polite, always gallant, always chivalrous, and indefatigable to the end.

The villains in the piece, besides the power-mad Philip II, are the Spanish ambassador to England, Don Jose Alvarez de Cordoba, portrayed by WB stock player Claude Rains, who had just done the evil Prince John in "Robin Hood"; and a traitorous advisor to the Queen, the English Lord Wolfingham, played by Henry Daniell. There was apparently some thought at the studio about casting Basil Rathbone as Wolfingham, but perhaps because Rathbone had already played two villainous parts in previous Flynn pictures, "Captain Blood" and "Robin Hood," the part went to Daniell. Or perhaps Rathbone was not anxious to do yet another villain, as by now he had well established himself as the screen's leading Sherlock Holmes. Anyway, Daniell is fine in a sniveling, treacherous, obsequious sort of way.

Of course, we have to have a love interest. This time it is not Olivia de Havilland; it's Brenda Marshall, as Dona Maria Alvarez de Cordoba, the beautiful niece of the evil Spanish Ambassador, and herself half English. She's with her uncle on board a ship bound for England when Captain Thorpe seizes it, its treasure, and its passengers. Thorpe dutifully turns all of them over to the Queen, the Ambassador being outraged by such an insult. The fact that he was on his way to assure Elizabeth of Spain's eternal devotion to England while the King of Spain was plotting an attack on her country is only a part of the fellow's duplicity. So, hate the uncle, love the niece. It's exactly the same setup we had in "Captain Blood" five years earlier. Marshall isn't as delicate a beauty as de Havilland nor as feisty, but she has an earnest appeal, nevertheless. Needless to say, love blossoms slowly between Dona Maria and Thorpe, but blossom it does by the movie's end.

The rest of the cast is nicely filled out by WB's usual suspects. There's Donald Crisp as Sir John Burleson, the actor getting fourth billing after Flynn, Marshall, and Rains even though his part is relatively small. There's Alan Hale as first mate Carl Pitt, Thorpe's best friend, just as he was Robin Hood's best friend, Little John, the year before. There's Gilbert Roland as the suave and gracious Captain Lopez, Roland another of those actors who had already been around forever in motion pictures and would continue making movies until the 1980s. An amazing run. Then there's Una O'Conner as Dona Maria's maid, just as she had been Marian's maid in "Robin Hood"; and, yes, she again flirts with Hale's character, just as she did in "Robin Hood." Audiences loved (and still love) seeing these recurring character types.

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