Brenda Marshall

(On Cable TV, March 2019) If you want to see swashbuckling adventures at their best, you must see an Errol Flynn film and if you want to see Flynn at his best, there aren’t many better choices than The Sea Hawk. Pitting an Elizabethan-era English hero against the might of the Spanish Armada (doubled with a few parallels to the enemy as Nazis, to whip up patriotic fervour along the way), this is not a film that deals in nuances—the heroes are virtuous, the villains are perfidious, the English ruler is just and the love interest quite lovely indeed. It works, though: the spirit of adventure runs high enough to bulldoze through any credibility objections. Take the first boarding sequences, for instance—dodgy tactics and overconfidence by the British, but it’s still a great sequence. Few genre tropes are left unused, even in the spying business back on the home front. Flynn makes a terrific hero, and Brenda Marshall is quite good as well as the beautiful Spanish girl who can’t help but fall for him. Michael Curtiz directs with energy and confidence, all the way to the landmark final sword-fight, which features energetic performances, shadowed cinematography, cut candles, broken furniture and people being thrown through windows. It’s a final sequence that caps a quintessential adventure film with generous period detail and costumes. The Sea Hawk remains quite an experience event today—it’s still at the top of the genre.