CAPTAIN BLOOD (1935)

Australia gave Hollywood its biggest action star of the sound era when Errol Flynn came out of the blue as a replacement for Robert Donat (who was dealing with chronic asthma) in this classic swashbuckler. He stars as a doctor unjustly sold into slavery after treating a rebel. When he and his fellow prisoners escape, they take over a Spanish galleon and set themselves up as pirates. With Flynn’s titular captain leading them, they can’t help but become the greatest buccaneers sailing the Caribbean. The film was Warner Bros.’ move into historical adventures after years of mostly producing contemporary stories. It also marked the first of eight pictures to team Flynn and Olivia de Havilland, one of the era’s most popular romantic pairings. Hungarian-born Michael Curtiz directed this and six other films with the pair, while Czech composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold, whose style would be copied in the Star Wars films, scored seven of Flynn’s pictures.

d. Michael Curtiz, 119m, DCP

Restoration by Warner Bros. Discovery and The Criterion Collection.