The Sea Hawk **** (1924, Milton Sills, Enid Bennett, Lloyd Hughes, Wallace Beery) – Classic Movie Review 3859

Director Frank Lloyd’s once famous 1924 silent film of Rafael Sabatini’s sea-borne swashbuckler story is beautifully produced and still exciting. It was a big hit and ended up the highest grossing movie of 1924.

Forgotten star Milton Sills plays the English buccaneer sea captain, Sir Oliver Tressilian, who wreaks havoc on the Spanish fleet, in a story now best known in the classic 1940 Errol Flynn version, The Sea Hawk.

Sir Oliver is a rich Cornish landowner hoping to marry Lady Rosamund Godolphin (Enid Bennett), the beautiful young Cornish woman he loves who is the daughter of the owner of a near-by estate. But her brother Peter Godolphin (Wallace McDonald) is a violent young bully who doesn’t think Sir Oliver’s family is good enough. And then there’s more trouble from Sir Oliver’s faithless half brother Lionel Tressilian (Lloyd Hughes) who wants Lady Rosamund for himself.

Sir Oliver is framed for Peter’s murder and captured by pirates, who sell him to the Spaniards as a galley slave. But then he is rescued by the Moors and Asad-ed-Din – Basha of Algiers (Frank Currier) takes a liking to him and he becomes their top pirate with the fearsome name of Sakr El-Bahr, The Sea Hawk.

The story remains reasonably faithful to the Sabatini original, the film is attractively shot by Norbert F Brodine, the sea-fight action is superbly handled, Sills makes a good, athletic hero and Beery slices some brilliant silent-film ham as the pirate captain, Jasper Leigh.

Also in the cast are Marc McDermott, William Collier Jr, Bert Woodruff, Claire Du Brey, Christina Montt, Albert Prisco, Medea Radzina and Lionel Belmore.

The 1994 restoration print runs 123 minutes.

Sills’s career spanned the silent era from 1914 till his sudden early death of a heart attack while playing tennis in 1930, aged 48. He was one of the 36 founders of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

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© Derek Winnert 2016 Classic Movie Review 3859

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