#Mutiny on the bounty movie movie#
After looking around, take a walk up to the Tahara look-out for a stunning panoramic view of the neighbouring island of Moorea and the Bay of Matavai, where many of the 1962 movie scenes were filmed.įarther on, on the black volcanic sands of Point Venus you'll find the monolith commemorating the place where the Bounty crew first set foot in Tahiti. Following the coast north east from Papeete takes you to Arue, where the former home of James Norman Hall, adventurer, soldier, fighter pilot and author of the most famous novel about the Bounty is now a museum. Tahiti – described by Bligh as "the finest island in the world" – is the largest of the archipelago, and home to Papeete, capital of French Polynesia. Some things have changed in the South Seas, and the natives no longer run half-naked to greet each newcomer, but the Society Islands remain very much the unspoiled paradise that cinema and fiction have branded in our collective memory. The latest remake (1984), starred Mel Gibson and Anthony Hopkins, while in the 1962 adaptation, Trevor Howard played the Captain to the unforgettable Mr Christian of Marlon Brando, who married Maimiti on screen and then later made the actress Tarita his third real-life wife. In the first, (1935) Clark Gable as Mr Christian faced Charles Laughton as a tyrannical Bligh – a maligned and misrepresented character as in reality the Captain was both an honourable man and a great sailor. Those are the bare bones of what happened in 1789, a tale that has inspired numerous stories and books as well as three major Hollywood screen adaptations. Once back on the high seas, they mutinied, and set Captain Bligh and 18 loyal men afloat in a small boat – which fortunately carried them safely to land in the Dutch East Indies – and set sail again for what they now thought of as their home in the South Seas. So it's not surprising that once the season turned and it was time to set sail again, the crew were reluctant, to say the least. They fell in love with the islands, and, too, with the natives – Fletcher Christian even married a local woman.
Which is where things got 'complicated'.The sailors became accustomed to the easy island life, to the spectacular scenery of shining lagoons and volcanic slopes carpeted in lush green vegetation. And those months were spent in the closest equivalent to Paradise on earth: the beautiful islands of French Polynesia, with their gentle climate, palm-fringed beaches and welcoming native women. Instead, after the arduous outward voyage, they had to wait nearly a further six months to safely transplant the young plants if these were to survive the onward journey. If the crew of the Bounty could simply have loaded the seedlings aboard and left immediately, the mutiny may never have happened. They'd travelled half way across the world to Polynesia to find breadfruit plants for the British empire which were to be planted in the Caribbean to help feed the slaves there, but the long and dangerous voyage took ten months – far longer than planned.
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