C. S. Forester was the Patrick O'Brian of his day. Like O'Brian, he was the author of a series of novels which had as their hero a British naval commander of the Napoleonic Wars and, like O'Brian, he was highly popular with the reading public. Although the exploits of Forester's hero, Horatio Hornblower, have recently been made into a television series, they have only served as the basis for one feature film.
I have not read all the Hornblower novels, and it is a long time since I read any of them. It is, however, quite clear that the film was based upon episodes cobbled together from at least two different novels. During the first half of the film, Captain Hornblower is commanding a British ship off the coast of Central America, where he tangles with a local ruler who has declared independence from Spain and made himself dictator. In the second half, Hornblower leads a daring raid on a French naval base and is taken prisoner by the enemy, but manages to escape back to Britain. The lack of any real connection between the two halves of the film means that it is not completely satisfactory in terms of structure; it might have worked better as two separate films.
There is one thread that links the two halves; the love affair between Hornblower and Lady Barbara Wellesley, the sister of the Duke of Wellington. The two fall in love after the unhappily married Hornblower rescues Lady Barbara, the fiancée of his superior officer Admiral Leighton, during his Latin American adventure. Following their return to Britain, Lady Barbara and Leighton are married, but Hornblower's wife and the Admiral both conveniently die before the end, leaving the lovers free to marry. Hornblower's wife does not appear in the film, so there is nothing to suggest what sort of a woman she was and why he was so unhappy with her. Again, I found this ending unsatisfactory for two reasons, both because it was too neat and because it seemed heartless to kill off two people to provide a "happy" ending for two others. The scriptwriters seem to have been following the plot of the novels too slavishly; it might have made for a better film if they had felt free to depart from Forester's text and make one, or both, of the lovers single.
This was the first of two successive films in which Gregory Peck played an officer in the armed forces; the other was Captain Richard Lance in "Only the Valiant". The two characters, however, are quite different, with very different styles of leadership. Whereas Lance is a strict disciplinarian, Hornblower is more liberal. We do see one seaman being flogged, but the order for this punishment is given by a junior officer. Hornblower reluctantly allows the flogging to go ahead on the grounds that to countermand an order given by a subordinate would undermine discipline, and in the hope that the barbarity of the procedure will persuade the young man to be more humane in future. Although there were exceptions such as his excellent Ahab in "Moby Dick", Peck was often at his best playing rational, liberal men of integrity, and I found this a better performance than the one he gave in "Only the Valiant".
Most people will not, however, watch this film either as a love story or as a study in leadership, but as a swashbuckling historical adventure, and on this level it works well. Although they are not quite as realistic as those in a modern film such as "Master and Commander", the battle scenes are well done. Forester was capable of writing stirring tales of adventure, and, at its best, this film succeeds in capturing his spirit of excitement. 6/10
I have not read all the Hornblower novels, and it is a long time since I read any of them. It is, however, quite clear that the film was based upon episodes cobbled together from at least two different novels. During the first half of the film, Captain Hornblower is commanding a British ship off the coast of Central America, where he tangles with a local ruler who has declared independence from Spain and made himself dictator. In the second half, Hornblower leads a daring raid on a French naval base and is taken prisoner by the enemy, but manages to escape back to Britain. The lack of any real connection between the two halves of the film means that it is not completely satisfactory in terms of structure; it might have worked better as two separate films.
There is one thread that links the two halves; the love affair between Hornblower and Lady Barbara Wellesley, the sister of the Duke of Wellington. The two fall in love after the unhappily married Hornblower rescues Lady Barbara, the fiancée of his superior officer Admiral Leighton, during his Latin American adventure. Following their return to Britain, Lady Barbara and Leighton are married, but Hornblower's wife and the Admiral both conveniently die before the end, leaving the lovers free to marry. Hornblower's wife does not appear in the film, so there is nothing to suggest what sort of a woman she was and why he was so unhappy with her. Again, I found this ending unsatisfactory for two reasons, both because it was too neat and because it seemed heartless to kill off two people to provide a "happy" ending for two others. The scriptwriters seem to have been following the plot of the novels too slavishly; it might have made for a better film if they had felt free to depart from Forester's text and make one, or both, of the lovers single.
This was the first of two successive films in which Gregory Peck played an officer in the armed forces; the other was Captain Richard Lance in "Only the Valiant". The two characters, however, are quite different, with very different styles of leadership. Whereas Lance is a strict disciplinarian, Hornblower is more liberal. We do see one seaman being flogged, but the order for this punishment is given by a junior officer. Hornblower reluctantly allows the flogging to go ahead on the grounds that to countermand an order given by a subordinate would undermine discipline, and in the hope that the barbarity of the procedure will persuade the young man to be more humane in future. Although there were exceptions such as his excellent Ahab in "Moby Dick", Peck was often at his best playing rational, liberal men of integrity, and I found this a better performance than the one he gave in "Only the Valiant".
Most people will not, however, watch this film either as a love story or as a study in leadership, but as a swashbuckling historical adventure, and on this level it works well. Although they are not quite as realistic as those in a modern film such as "Master and Commander", the battle scenes are well done. Forester was capable of writing stirring tales of adventure, and, at its best, this film succeeds in capturing his spirit of excitement. 6/10