Mutiny on the Bounty (1962 film) The voyage gets off to a difficult start with the discovery that some cheese is missing. Bligh, the true pilferer, is accused of the theft by seaman John Mills (Richard Harris), and Bligh has Mills brutally flogged for showing contempt to his superior officer, to the disgust of his patrician second-in-command, 1st Lieutenant Fletcher Christian (Marlon Brando). The tone for the months to come is summarized by Bligh's ominous pronouncement that "cruelty with a purpose is not cruelty, it is efficiency." Aristocrat Christian is deeply offended by his ambitious captain. Bligh attempts to reach Tahiti sooner by attempting the shorter
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