The Master of Ballantrae **** (1953, Errol Flynn, Roger Livesey, Anthony Steel, Beatrice Campbell, Felix Aylmer, Yvonne Furneaux, Mervyn Johns) – Classic Movie Review 7279

The Master of Ballantrae theatrical release poster.

Director William Keighley’s rousing British made 1953 Warner Bros movie The Master of Ballantrae stars Errol Flynn, who swashbuckles one more time in a totally rewritten and truncated version of the classic 1889 Robert Louis Stevenson adventure novel about the Jacobite plot to put Bonnie Prince Charlie on the throne of England.

It focuses on a laird’s two sons – Jamie Durie (Errol Flynn) and his younger brother Henry (Anthony Steel) – clashing over the family estate and a woman – Lady Alison (Beatrice Campbell) –  in 18th-century Scotland. The brothers take opposite sides when Bonnie Prince Charlie returns to claim the throne of Scotland and Jamie ends up becoming a pirate.

Perhaps Flynn’s best swashbuckling days were over, but he is still enjoyable to watch as Jamie Durie, the yarn is lusty and entertaining, while the superb Cornish, Scottish and Sicilian scenery and Jack Cardiff’s glowing Technicolor cinematography add a lot of lustre.

Anthony Steel plays Jamie’s brother Henry Durie. Also in the cast are Roger Livesey as Colonel Francis Burke, Beatrice Campbell as Lady Alison, Yvonne Furneaux as Jessie Brown, Felix Aylmer as the brothers’ laird father Lord Durrisdeer, Mervyn Johns as MacKellar, Charles Goldner as Captain Mendoza, Ralph Truman as Major Clarendon, Francis de Wolff as Matthew Bull, Arnaud’s Quarter Master, Jacques Berthier as Captain Arnaud, Gillian Lynne as Marianne, Mendoza’s favoured dancer, Charles Carson, Moultrie Kelsall, Jackie Taylor, Stephen Vercoe, Jack Lambert and Arthur Mullard.

Sadly, it marked the end of an era. It is the last film of Warner Bros veteran Keighley, who handles it in the vivacious, fast-moving old style of the Thirties classics like The Adventures of Robin Hood. Also it is Flynn’s last film under contract to Warner Bros, after 18 years and 35 films. But he goes out on a high note, in a film regarded as his best swashbuckler since his 1940 The Sea Hawk. Flynn was well behaved and happy, and filming went smoothly. 

It was shot in Cornwall and the Scottish Highlands, with the pirate sequences in Palermo in Sicily. Unusually, filming was six days a week.

Flynn reflected: ‘In the 18th century men treated their women either angels or scullery maids. You were either gallantly or roughly romantic, and the women expected it one way or the other.’

Warners, who in 1950 bought the screen rights to the novel that was still in copyright in some European countries, appointed Joe Gottesman as producer and Herb Meadow to do the adaptation and screenplay and Harold Medford as writer of additional dialogue.

It is remade as The Master of Ballantrae in 1984 with Michael York.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 7279

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