Go Take a Flying Dutchman

Pandora and the Flying Dutchman (1951) seems to be well known and well loved (I read about it in Farran Nehme's blog. But it took Netflix a long time to serve up. Once it came off of the Saved list, I ordered it up.

It was made on location on the coast of Spain. Some fishermen are chatting in dialect when they find something washed up on the beach - two bodies, a man and a woman. English ex-pat archeologist Harold Warrender, who has been watching from his villa, tells us the story.

Eva Gardner plays Pandora, a nightclub signer and playgirl. Warrender flashes back to an evening in a restaurant when a young poet (Marius Goring), desperately in love with her, kills himself when she won't marry him. She doesn't exactly laugh it off, but it doesn't seem to affect her deeply, either.

One of the other men hopelessly in love with her is Nigel Patrick, a racecar driver aiming to beat the land speed record. She lets him take her driving in his racecar, and they park overlooking the ocean. She asks him what he would sacrifice for her. When he says "anything", she asks him to push his car over the cliff. He does and she agrees to marry him.

But on their way home, after meeting with Warrender, she spots a yacht offshore. When the men decline to row her out to it to meet the owner, she strips naked and swims out. There, soaking wet and wrapped in a sail cover, she meets this mysterious man. It is James Mason, a Dutch ship-owner, painting a portrait of a woman in the style of de Cirico (although it was actually painted by Man Ray) - a rather stiff woman on a perspective-lined plain. The woman has Pandora's face.

So Gardner and Mason begin to fall in love, although she has already promised to marry Patrick. Warrender, the archeologist, asks Mason for some help on translating an old Dutch journal, which turns out to be the journal of the Flying Dutchman - a sailor who killed his wife and blasphemed against God. He was cursed to sail the seas eternally, allowed to land every 7 years. In that time, if he can find a woman willing to die for him, he can be set free. Guess who turns out to be the Dutchman? And who will sacrifice herself for him? It's no spoiler, it's the movie's opening scene.

This is an incredibly lush and romantic movie. It was directed by Albert Lewin (Picture of Dorian Grey) but Jack Cardiff was the cinematographer. Lewin supplied the symbolism and surrealism (he was a collector of modern art) and Cardiff the rich technicolor, and a few process shots. 

This is also a somewhat silly movie, with quotes from the Rubaiyat (the Moving Finger verse) and made up quotes from Greek philosophers. There is even a bullfighter, one of Gardner's conquests, come back to claim her. But I, at least, got swept up in the passion and the grandeur. Or maybe I just like Ava Gardner's face, like everyone else.