Mutiny on the Bounty (1962 film) Milestone. "Lack of vision. When they realised there was so much trouble with the script they should have stopped the whole damn production. If they did not like Marlon's behaviour they should have told him that they must do as they wished or else they should have taken him out of the picture. But they just did not have the guts." Bosley Crowther of "The New York Times" wrote that "there's much that is eye-filling and gripping as pure spectacle," but criticized Marlin Brando for making Fletcher Christian "more a dandy than a formidable ship's officer ... one feels the
Mutiny on the Bounty unfortunate in his timing: The story of the mutiny became public knowledge when the Romantic poets first commanded the literary scene. Bligh's chief apologist was Sir Joseph Banks, while Christian was championed by Wordsworth and Coleridge. Among historians' attempts to portray Bligh more sympathetically are those of Richard Hough (1972) and Caroline Alexander (2003). Hough depicts ""an unsurpassed foul-weather commander ... I would go through hell and high water with him, but not for one day in the same ship on a calm sea"". Alexander presents Bligh as over-anxious, solicitous of his crew's well-being, and utterly devoted to his task,