Mutiny on the Bounty (1935 film) since the inception of talking pictures. It is grim, gripping and pictorially perfect." John Mosher of "The New Yorker" declared that the filmmakers had "done a good, solid, fine job" and wrote that Laughton's performance as Captain Bligh "may not be exactly the image of the original brute, but it's a Laughton masterpiece." "Mutiny on the Bounty" topped the annual "Film Daily" poll of 523 critics as the best film of 1936 (it was released too late in the year to appear on the 1935 ballot). According to MGM records the film earned $2,250,000 in the US and Canada and
Jean-François de Galaup, comte de Lapérouse In November 1790, Captain Edward Edwards—in command of HMS "Pandora"—had sailed from England with orders to comb the Pacific for the mutineers of HMS "Bounty". In March of the following year, "Pandora" arrived at Tahiti and picked up 14 "Bounty" men who had stayed on that island. Although some of the 14 had not joined the mutiny, all were imprisoned and shackled in a cramped "cage" built on the deck, which the men grimly nicknamed "Pandora's Box". "Pandora" then left Tahiti in search of "Bounty" and the leader of the mutiny, Fletcher Christian. Captain Edwards' search for the remaining mutineers