Captain Horatio Hornblower
Jan. 18th, 2025 11:23 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
regshoeI've recently convinced my brother to start reading the Hornblower books, and he seems to be enjoying them so far! So when sanguinity pointed out that the 1951 film adaptation Captain Horatio Hornblower, starring Gregory Peck as the title character, is based on books I'd already read, I thought I'd suggest watching a Hornblower film as a fun family holiday activity when I saw my brother over Christmas.
It was good fun seeing Hornblower and all the action of the books on screen! I'm not really quite familiar enough with the actual details of a sailing ship to visualise everything in the books very successfully, and in a way I think this helped. And there is a pleasing amount of the sort of swashbuckling that works well on screen. However:
So, the film is based on the first three books by publication order—The Happy Return, A Ship of the Line and Flying Colours—but this is a bit of a misleading statement. What actually happens is that the first ~two-thirds is a reasonably faithful if condensed adaptation of The Happy Return, and (just when we seem to have reached something like an ending) we then move onto a tiny bit of A Ship of the Line before whizzing through a highly condensed Flying Colours in the last twenty minutes or so. The pacing is as a result rather strange and confusing. Brother had read part of The Happy Return and not either of the other two and definitely found it tricky to follow; I think I'd have been pretty lost if I hadn't known the books.
And I'm not sure why the filmmakers were so determined to include A Ship of the Line and Flying Colours, because they carefully removed all the good stuff from the bits that are included—most importantly the Hornblower/Bush slashiness and hurt/comfort. Bush doesn't even lose his leg, for goodness' sake! He gets shot in the leg, he seems to be a bit hurt, but then he gets better and the leg is completely fine and there's no anguished womanly hand-holding, no Hornblower having to watch his best friend go through the agony of an amputation, suffer terribly and almost die while in captivity, no learning to walk again on a dashingly piratical wooden leg, did I mention no fraught tender hand-holding or anything??? The romantic Loire boating holiday is not dwelt on lovingly at all, and Brown is replaced by a random OC sailor for no reason. This plot is as badly mutilated as Bush's leg isn't. To be fair the film does also cut out the worst part of Flying Colours, viz. the Marie affair, but that's kind of almost a bad thing too, because...
...I think the worst failing of this film is that it removes everything weird, messed-up, unconventional and generally distinctive about Hornblower and tries to turn him into a generic model hero. Some of this was certainly intentional, and some of it seems like the inevitable result of seeing Hornblower from outside rather than being in his head all the time, because so much of his messed-up-ness in the books is internal. So we don't get any of his variously dysfunctional/unsatisfied/self-loathing internal thoughts; the Hornblower-Barbara-Maria triangle is simplified and Hornblower/Barbara flattened into a far more conventional romance with a far more straightforwardly happy ending than is possible with book!Hornblower; there can be no difficult bad-idea relationships with any other women like Marie; and of course there can be no suspiciously anguished hand-holding or boating holiday cuddling with Bush either. Everything about the film is just made so much more acceptable, all the weird rough edges of the books sanded off; even El Supremo is more of an entertaining pantomime villain and much less genuinely horrifying than he was in the book.
So that is my first foray into Hornblower adaptations, and I am not on the whole very impressed. I hope to watch the TV series when I've read a few more books, and I'll see what I make of that...
sanguinity pointed out that the 1951 film adaptation Captain Horatio Hornblower, starring Gregory Peck as the title character, is based on books I'd already read, I thought I'd suggest watching a Hornblower film as a fun family holiday activity when I saw my brother over Christmas.It was good fun seeing Hornblower and all the action of the books on screen! I'm not really quite familiar enough with the actual details of a sailing ship to visualise everything in the books very successfully, and in a way I think this helped. And there is a pleasing amount of the sort of swashbuckling that works well on screen. However:
So, the film is based on the first three books by publication order—The Happy Return, A Ship of the Line and Flying Colours—but this is a bit of a misleading statement. What actually happens is that the first ~two-thirds is a reasonably faithful if condensed adaptation of The Happy Return, and (just when we seem to have reached something like an ending) we then move onto a tiny bit of A Ship of the Line before whizzing through a highly condensed Flying Colours in the last twenty minutes or so. The pacing is as a result rather strange and confusing. Brother had read part of The Happy Return and not either of the other two and definitely found it tricky to follow; I think I'd have been pretty lost if I hadn't known the books.
And I'm not sure why the filmmakers were so determined to include A Ship of the Line and Flying Colours, because they carefully removed all the good stuff from the bits that are included—most importantly the Hornblower/Bush slashiness and hurt/comfort. Bush doesn't even lose his leg, for goodness' sake! He gets shot in the leg, he seems to be a bit hurt, but then he gets better and the leg is completely fine and there's no anguished womanly hand-holding, no Hornblower having to watch his best friend go through the agony of an amputation, suffer terribly and almost die while in captivity, no learning to walk again on a dashingly piratical wooden leg, did I mention no fraught tender hand-holding or anything??? The romantic Loire boating holiday is not dwelt on lovingly at all, and Brown is replaced by a random OC sailor for no reason. This plot is as badly mutilated as Bush's leg isn't. To be fair the film does also cut out the worst part of Flying Colours, viz. the Marie affair, but that's kind of almost a bad thing too, because...
...I think the worst failing of this film is that it removes everything weird, messed-up, unconventional and generally distinctive about Hornblower and tries to turn him into a generic model hero. Some of this was certainly intentional, and some of it seems like the inevitable result of seeing Hornblower from outside rather than being in his head all the time, because so much of his messed-up-ness in the books is internal. So we don't get any of his variously dysfunctional/unsatisfied/self-loathing internal thoughts; the Hornblower-Barbara-Maria triangle is simplified and Hornblower/Barbara flattened into a far more conventional romance with a far more straightforwardly happy ending than is possible with book!Hornblower; there can be no difficult bad-idea relationships with any other women like Marie; and of course there can be no suspiciously anguished hand-holding or boating holiday cuddling with Bush either. Everything about the film is just made so much more acceptable, all the weird rough edges of the books sanded off; even El Supremo is more of an entertaining pantomime villain and much less genuinely horrifying than he was in the book.
So that is my first foray into Hornblower adaptations, and I am not on the whole very impressed. I hope to watch the TV series when I've read a few more books, and I'll see what I make of that...
no subject
Date: Jan. 18th, 2025 04:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Jan. 18th, 2025 07:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Jan. 18th, 2025 05:39 pm (UTC)I remember not being especially impressed with the ship in this. *digs through the trivia sections of various IMDB articles* Ah, here, from the trivia section of the 1950 Treasure Island (whose Hispaniola became the Lydia in this film.)
I didn't realize it had been a working ship back in its day; I thought it was a purpose-built movie set. I'm not sure about this whole "schooner" business, though -- I just went back and looked at the trailers again for Hornblower and Treasure Island, and that is NOT a schooner (which is distinguished by its sail plan) but a full-rigged ship, as the Lydia should be.
*mutters in maritime*
*digs through more webpages*
National Maritime Museum at Cornwall confirms the Ryelands was a schooner, but in these photos it's definitely fully-rigged, so apparently the rigging was converted at some point.
*keeps digging; never gets a resolution to the schooner-vs-fully-rigged question*
But I've now read enough webpages about the Ryelands that I'm feeling affection for her, and want to watch all her discography.
Moving on...
There's some bits with this Bush that I like -- confidently betting on Hornblower at the beginning, and just his general bluff way -- but yes, I wanted to see a proper film adaptation of Flying Colours, and we never got it. The guy who played Bush in the miniseries ALSO wanted to do Flying Colours (AND he ships Bush with Hornblower, as he should!), but alas, the series was cancelled before they got there, and he's now aged out of the part.
*gnashes teeth for a properly heartfelt and slashy Flying Colours adaptation*
And yes, randomly changing Brown's name was...?? There were a lot of weird adaptational choices in this film. Some was straight-up Hays Code stuff, and I assume the leg injury changed because a Nelson-era officer's uniform does not have such copious skirts that an actor can just fold their leg up behind. (Which is what they did for Long John Silver in Treasure Island, I think.) But a bunch of the changes were just odd.
some of it seems like the inevitable result of seeing Hornblower from outside rather than being in his head all the time, because so much of his messed-up-ness in the books is internal.
Yup. There's a WWII Forester novel about a Hornblower-esque ship captain who suffers mental agonies (The Good Shepherd) and I'm told when it was adapted to film, it was mostly two hours of Tom Hanks looking silently constipated. When you get to the TV show, we can discuss whether it succeeded any better on this point.
...speaking of the TV miniseries, if you wanted to interleave it with your reading, you could. S1 is Midshipman, with no other elements. S2 is Lieutenant, with no other elements. And S3 is Hotspur, with no other elements.
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Date: Jan. 18th, 2025 07:11 pm (UTC)What a shame there are no properly slashy Flying Colours adaptations :( I'm delighted to hear that Bush's TV actor ships it, however (as in, actually ships it, and has said so??)
I suppose there is a point in it being a bit difficult to show a character losing their leg when they're played by a real actor who does actually have two legs, but I'm sure something could have been managed.
...speaking of the TV miniseries, if you wanted to interleave it with your reading, you could.
Oh, that's an idea! I had thought it was more mixed-up than that, somehow. Well, perhaps, then—I'll be re-reading Lieutenant next, which might provide an opportunity.
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Date: Jan. 18th, 2025 08:08 pm (UTC)One of the links I found said that in one film they held the ship steady and rocked the artificial horizon, and in another film they held the horizon steady and rocked the ship -- so maybe everything filmed right on the decks in closeish shots was a set? (In the pre-digital era, it was very common in maritime productions to have some shots be an actual ship, some shots be ship models, and some shots be a set.) More research is required, obviously.
(as in, actually ships it, and has said so??)
He appeared at a Doctor Who convention maybe five years ago, and during the convention they played a compilation of Bush and Hornblower scenes. When the clip finished playing, according to a fan who was there:
I suppose there is a point in it being a bit difficult to show a character losing their leg when they're played by a real actor who does actually have two legs, but I'm sure something could have been managed.
Agreed. I think this was a case where they didn't actually care enough to spend the money faking it. Peck played Captain Ahab a few years later (also on the Ryelands!), and while I haven't seen the film, he has a wooden leg in the production stills.
Obviously I need to watch the Ryelands' entire discography...
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Date: Jan. 19th, 2025 12:19 am (UTC)I am actually very fond of the 1956 Moby Dick, which has the predictable million problems of a mid-century Hollywood adaptation on top of the predictable million problems of an adaptation of Moby-Dick, but it also has some incredible features, like cinematography that looks like hand-tinted postcards and an uncredited A. L. Lloyd cameoing as a shantyman leading "Blood Red Roses" and "Heave Away My Johnny."
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Date: Jan. 19th, 2025 08:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Jan. 19th, 2025 08:21 am (UTC)don’t you think bush and hornblower should have just got a room? ... *sultry voice* “kiss me, you fool…..”
XD Amazing.
Obviously I need to watch the Ryelands' entire discography...
You totally should. Now I'm wondering what real ships have ever played the
PrecariosaCovenant, hmmm. I'd been meaning to watch the 1960 film sometime, so I'll pay attention to the maritime bits when I do.no subject
Date: Jan. 19th, 2025 04:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Jan. 19th, 2025 07:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Jan. 18th, 2025 07:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Jan. 19th, 2025 08:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Jan. 18th, 2025 09:23 pm (UTC)I remember enjoying it as an indendent object containing Gregory Peck and boats, but it does in fact have no pacing and a tangential relevance to its source material.
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Date: Jan. 19th, 2025 08:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Jan. 19th, 2025 08:18 am (UTC)I have no idea what I meant by this phrase. In my defense, I seem to have spent most of the day running a fever. [edit] Independent?
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Date: Jan. 19th, 2025 08:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Jan. 21st, 2025 06:34 pm (UTC)This film was my first exposure to Hornblower (when I was in my early teens, someone thought I would like it because I liked "ships and adventure and stuff") but I remember almost nothing about it, except that I was fairly unimpressed, indeed so much so that it put me off reading Hornblower for years. So I found it really interesting to read your thoughts on it! You make it sound like a perfectly okay but rather conventional and generic film...
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Date: Jan. 22nd, 2025 05:03 pm (UTC)