''Pandora and the Flying Dutchman'' is a 1951 British

Technicolor Technicolor is a series of Color motion picture film, color motion picture processes, the first version dating back to 1916, and followed by improved versions over several decades. Definitive Technicolor movies using three black and white films ...

romantic

fantasy Fantasy is a genre of speculative fiction involving Magic (supernatural), magical elements, typically set in a fictional universe and sometimes inspired by mythology and folklore. Its roots are in oral traditions, which then became fantasy ...

drama Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance: a play, opera, mime, ballet, etc., performed in a theatre, or on radio or television.Elam (1980, 98). Considered as a genre of poetry in general, the dramatic mode has been ...

film directed by

Albert Lewin Albert Lewin (September 23, 1894 – May 9, 1968) was an American film director, producer, and screenwriter. Personal life Lewin was born in Brooklyn, New York and raised in Newark, New Jersey. He earned a master's degree at Harvard and taugh ...

and produced by Lewin and Joseph Kaufman from Lewin's own screenplay, based on the legend of the ''

Flying Dutchman The ''Flying Dutchman'' ( nl, De Vliegende Hollander) is a legendary ghost ship, allegedly never able to make port, but doomed to sail the seven seas forever. The myth is likely to have originated from the 17th-century Golden Age of the Dut ...

''. It was filmed mainly in Tossa de Mar, on the

Costa Brava The Costa Brava (, ; "Wild Coast" or "Rough Coast") is a coastal region of Catalonia in northeastern Spain. Whilst sources differ on the exact definition of the Costa Brava, it can be regarded as stretching from the town of Blanes, northeast o ...

Catalonia Catalonia (; ca, Catalunya ; Aranese Occitan: ''Catalonha'' ; es, Cataluña ) is an autonomous community of Spain, designated as a ''nationality'' by its Statute of Autonomy. Most of the territory (except the Val d'Aran) lies on the north ...

, Spain. The land record speed scenes were shot at

Pendine Sands Pendine Sands ( cy, Traeth Pentywyn) is a beach on the shores of Carmarthen Bay on the south coast of Wales. It stretches west to east from Gilman Point to Laugharne Sands. The village of Pendine ( cy, Pentywyn, link=no) is close to the wester ...

in Wales. The film stars

James Mason James Neville Mason (; 15 May 190927 July 1984) was an English actor. He achieved considerable success in British cinema before becoming a star in Hollywood. He was the top box-office attraction in the UK in 1944 and 1945; his British films inc ...

and

Ava Gardner Ava Lavinia Gardner (December 24, 1922 – January 25, 1990) was an American actress. She first signed a contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1941 and appeared mainly in small roles until she drew critics' attention in 1946 with her perform ...

, with

Nigel Patrick Nigel Patrick (born Nigel Dennis Patrick Wemyss-Gorman; 2 May 1912 – 21 September 1981) was an English actor and stage director born into a theatrical family. During the late 1940s and 1950s, he became known as a debonair leading man in Brit ...

Sheila Sim Sheila Beryl Grant Sim, Baroness Attenborough (5 June 1922 – 19 January 2016) was an English film and theatre actress. She was also the wife of the actor, director and peer Richard Attenborough. Career Sheila Beryl Grant Sim was born in L ...

Harold Warrender Harold John Warrender (15 November 1903 – 6 May 1953) was a British stage, film and television actor, and radio presenter. His father was Sir George Warrender, 7th Baronet. His mother was Lady Ethel Maud Ashley Cooper, a singer and patro ...

, Mario Cabré and

Marius Goring Marius Re Goring, (23 May 191230 September 1998) was a British stage and screen actor. He is best remembered for the four films he made with Powell & Pressburger, particularly as Conductor 71 in '' A Matter of Life and Death'' and as Julian Cr ...

in supporting roles. In Tossa de Mar, a statue of Gardner was erected in 1996 on the hill overlooking the town's main beach. In the United States,

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc., also known as Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures and abbreviated as MGM, is an American film, television production, distribution and media company owned by amazon (company), Amazon through MGM Holdings, founded o ...

(MGM) delayed its release until Gardner's star-making performance in ''

Show Boat ''Show Boat'' is a musical with music by Jerome Kern and book and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II. It is based on Edna Ferber's best-selling 1926 novel of the same name. The musical follows the lives of the performers, stagehands and dock worke ...

'' (1951) could be seen. The tactic worked, and this film solidified her status as a rapidly rising star. The film is mostly spoken in English, but some characters speak Catalan (the local fishermen at the beginning of the film) and Spanish (the bullfighter's entourage). Artist

Man Ray Man Ray (born Emmanuel Radnitzky; August 27, 1890 – November 18, 1976) was an American visual artist who spent most of his career in Paris. He was a significant contributor to the Dada and Surrealism, Surrealist movements, although his t ...

, who was a friend of Albert Lewin, produced some sets for ''Pandora''. He created particular cubist-style chess pieces and several paintings seen in the film, notably the main one, a sort of surreal scene in the

De Chirico Giuseppe Maria Alberto Giorgio de Chirico ( , ; 10 July 1888 – 20 November 1978) was an Italian artist and writer born in Greece. In the years before World War I, he founded the '' scuola metafisica'' art movement, which profoundly influ ...

fashion.

Plot

In autumn 1930, fishermen in the fictitious small Spanish port of Esperanza make a grim discovery in their nets, the bodies of a man and a woman. The resultant ringing of church bells in the village brings the local police and the resident archaeologist, Geoffrey Fielding (

), to the beach. Fielding returns to his villa, and, breaking the "

fourth wall The fourth wall is a performance convention in which an invisible, imaginary wall separates actors from the audience. While the audience can see through this ''wall'', the convention assumes the actors act as if they cannot. From the 16th cen ...

", retells the story of these two people to the audience. Esperanza's small group of English expatriates revolves around Pandora Reynolds (

), an alluring American

nightclub singer A nightclub act is a production, usually of nightclub music or comedy, designed for performance at a nightclub, a type of drinking establishment, by a nightclub performer such as a nightclub singer or nightclub dancer, whose performance may ...

and

femme fatale A ''femme fatale'' ( or ; ), sometimes called a maneater or vamp, is a stock character of a mysterious, beautiful, and seductive woman whose charms ensnare her lovers, often leading them into compromising, deadly traps. She is an archetype of ...

. All the men love her (or believe that they do), but Pandora is unable to love anyone. One of her admirers Reggie Demarest (

) commits suicide in front of Pandora and her friends by drinking wine that he has laced with poison, but Pandora shows indifference and later comments that she is relieved by his death. She tests her admirers by demanding they give up something they value. Pandora agrees to marry a land-speed record holder, Stephen Cameron (

), after he sends his racing car tumbling into the sea at her request. That same night, the Dutch captain Hendrik van der Zee (

) arrives in Esperanza. Pandora swims out to his yacht and finds him painting a picture of her posed as her namesake,

Pandora In Greek mythology, Pandora (Greek: , derived from , ''pān'', i.e. "all" and , ''dōron'', i.e. "gift", thus "the all-endowed", "all-gifted" or "all-giving") was the first human woman created by Hephaestus on the instructions of Zeus. As Hes ...

, whose actions brought an end to the earthly paradise in Greek mythology. Hendrik appears to fall in love with Pandora, and he moves into the same hotel complex as the other expatriates. Geoffrey and Hendrik become friends, collaborating to seek background information on Geoffrey's local finds. One of these relics is a notebook written in Old Dutch, which confirms Geoffrey's suspicion that Hendrik van der Zee is the

, a 16th-century ship captain who murdered his wife, believing her to be unfaithful. He blasphemed against God at his murder trial, where he was sentenced to death. The evening before his execution, a mysterious force opened the Dutchman's prison doors and allowed him to escape to his waiting ship, where in a dream it was revealed to him that his wife was innocent and he was doomed to sail the seas for eternity unless he could find a woman who loved him enough to die for him. Every seven years, the Dutchman could go ashore for six months to search for that woman. Despite her impending wedding to Stephen, Pandora declares her love for Hendrik, but he is unwilling to have her die for his sake, and tries to provoke her into hating him. Pandora is also loved by Juan Montalvo (Mario Cabré), an arrogant, famous bullfighter, who murders Hendrik out of jealousy. But as soon as Montalvo leaves, Hendrik comes back to life as if nothing had happened. He attends the bullfight the next day, and when Montalvo sees him in the audience, he becomes petrified with fear and is fatally gored by the bull. Before dying, Montalvo tells Pandora about his murder of his romantic rival, leaving her confused. On the eve of her wedding, Pandora asks Geoffrey if he knows anything about Hendrik that will clear up her confusion. Once he sees the Flying Dutchman preparing to sail away, he hands her his translation of the notebook. However, the Dutchman's yacht is becalmed. On learning the truth, Pandora swims out to Hendrik again. He shows her a small portrait of his murdered wife. She and Pandora look exactly alike. Hendrik explains they are man and wife and that through her he has been given the chance to escape his doom, but he rejected it because it would cost her death. Pandora is undaunted, however. That night, there is a fierce storm at sea. The next morning, the bodies of Pandora and the Dutchman are recovered.

Cast

Reception

According to MGM records, ''Pandora and the Flying Dutchman'' earned $1,247,000 in the US and Canada and $354,000 elsewhere. The film was one of the most popular films at the British box office 1951. It holds a rating of 67% on

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...

based on 33 reviews.

Comic book adaptation

Eastern Color The Eastern Color Printing Company was a company that published comic books, beginning in 1933. At first, it was only newspaper comic strip reprints, but later on, original material was published. Eastern Color Printing was incorporated in 19 ...

Movie Love #11 (October 1951)

References

External links

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Posters and stills from the film
{{DEFAULTSORT:Pandora And The Flying Dutchman 1951 films 1951 romantic drama films 1950s fantasy drama films 1950s mystery drama films 1950s romantic fantasy films Films set in 1930 British fantasy drama films British mystery drama films British romantic drama films British romantic fantasy films Bullfighting films Films adapted into comics Films directed by Albert Lewin Films set in the Mediterranean Sea Films shot in Spain Flying Dutchman 1950s English-language films 1950s British films