Pirates of Capri

As an art historian I was trained to treasure artistic quality, and shun the mediocre.  Readers of this blog know that I’m not much of a quality snob, and one of my favorite movies of and since childhood bears this out.

It’s the Pirates of Capri (1949), by that supreme B movie director Edgar G. Ulmer.  What? You never heard of it? Well, you’re in the majority!  I first ran into it on TV when I was about ten or eleven years old.  I had already passed through obsessions with dinosaurs and fairy princesses and was at that moment into----arrrrr---pirates.  In the early 1950’s Hollywood produced a string of pirate movies, all now forgotten, unless you’re a fan of TCM.  I saw as many as possible at Saturday 25-cent matinees, and so became acquainted with the likes of Blackbeard, Long John Silver, and lots of others.

Hayward as The Count

With “pirates” in the title, I naturally watched Ulmer’s epic when it came on 10-inch black and white TV.  It wasn’t really about pirates, but more about a popular revolt against the Bourbon Queen of Naples, Maria Carolina, or so the movie went (historically all wrong), and featured the dashing leader of the opposition, one masked avenger named “Captain Sirocco,” who occasionally raided ships but   Sirocco was actually the Count of Amalfi, a member of the Queen’s court who was seeking revenge for the murder of his brother five years previously by the evil Baron Holstein, Maria Carolina’s chief advisor.  Of course, he triumphs in his quest for justice, helping to lead the revolt, but saving the Queen, who, as a sister of Marie Antoinette sees “the people” only as a path for her to the guillotine.

only to secure arms for the fight.

 

Hayward as Captain Sirocco

There’s oodles of predictable swordplay, torture by the Baron of beautiful but loyal peasant girls to get information on the anti-regal plot, and a romance by Amalfi/Sirocco of a beautiful Spanish noblewoman to whom he was betrothed anyway.  If this sounds to you like Zorro or numerous other dual/personality superheroes, well, it’s a time-proven plotline.  I loved the movie so much as a kid that I remember once setting my alarm for 3 am so I could catch it again.

The star of this epic was Louis Hayward, an English actor who did a bunch of swordfighting roles, but often in sequels to better known action flicks, such as The Son of Monte Cristo and the Fortunes of Captain Blood, though he also did detective stuff like The Saint.  He’s very bouncy and fences nicely; Antonio Banderas would have done it better, but he wasn’t born yet when the picture was made. 

The balance of the actors were a mix of Italians and Americans, few if any of which were household names, Mariella Loti, whose film career was apparently brief, was a charming and cute love interest.  The best was the villain, Massimo Serato, who made many Italian films over a long career.  As   The only similarly satisfying villain of this type I can think of was Alan Rickman’s fiendishly witty Sheriff of Nottingham in the otherwise forgettable Kevin Kostner version of Robin Hood.

Holstein (at right) doing his worst

Holstein, he enthusiastically went over the top pursuing power, gleefully turning spiked wheels in the torture chamber, threatening all his ineffective minions with high treason, and slithering around the Queen.

What makes the picture as watchable today as any other swashbuckling story of good and evil was the stylishness of Edward G. Ulmer’s direction.  Best known as a virtual king of the “B” picture, Ulmer’s career was quite varied, from shooting pictures in Ukrainian and Yiddish in New Jersey for speakers of those languages in the 1930’s, horror films such as the Black Cat (1932) and Bluebeard (1944), to films noirs like Detour that brought him posthumous fame by French advocates of auteur theory (for an excellent analysis of his varied production, see the article by Erik Ulman given in the link below).

Pirates of Capri features really interesting noiresque traits: the cliffs and rebel’s hideout on Capri are dark and jagged, and except for the court scenes, this darkness predominates.  Quick vignettes: a silhouetted man blowing a warning conch shell, a weeping child during Holstein’s raid on Capri, the grids of the Neapolitan prison cells, and the actors who played peasants, with their furrowed faces, lumpy bodies and bad teeth, all share traits with the contemporary neo realist films of Ulmer’s Italian contemporaries such as Roberto Rosselini and Vittorio de Sica—it’s all quite different than your average Errol Flynn epic.

The history of the film is somewhat murky.  After being consigned in Hollywood to low budget pictures after an affair got him blackballed by the big studios in the 1930’s (an affair with a married woman, whom he eventually married after her divorce), he got the opportunity to film in Italy with the Italian company AFA.  Pirates was shot in both Italian and English language versions with the same cast (except for the patriot girl Annette played by different actresses). On at least the Italian   Were the two films slightly or markedly different?  We’ll probably never know, since the Italian version apparently doesn’t survive. 

Edgar G. Ulmen

version Ulmer collaborated with Giuseppe Maria Scotese, but the latter was uncredited in the English version (on the other hand, Scotese is listed as sole director on the Italian website Mymovies.it).

Ulmer’s budget was bigger than what the Americans allowed him, and he did exterior shots on site and interiors in Rome’s lavish Cinecittà.  But in the end, it’s the location shooting, with its ominous and atmospheric lighting, that distinguishes this movie from your average pirate flick. An early score by the composer Nino Rota (best known here for the first two Godfather films), also aided the moody exteriors.

The film had a longer shelf-life than you’d expect.  It was released under various titles, including The Masked Pirate in England, and on a later Videotape as Captain Sirocco.  Because of renewed critical interest, a much better print was issued on a CD 2014.

I watched the film again yesterday.  I still love it with all its flaws.  If you want to see it, it’s on Youtube.  Go Pirates (or is it rebels)?

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If you want to see the movie, it's at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2ZH_Fr74nc

Some critical Essays on Ulmer:

Geoffrey Mc Nab, Magic on a Shoestring in The Guardian, August 4, 2004:
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2004/aug/05/2

Erik Ulman's Critical review of Ulmer's career:
http://sensesofcinema.com/2003/great-directors/ulmer/

Philippe Gautreau: French review of DVD:
http://www.dvdfr.com/dvd/c75321-pirate-de-capri.html

Gary Morris's review of the DVD:
http://imagesjournal.com/issue10/reviews/pirates/