Tragic tempest
Pandora and the Flying Dutchman
Dive into the stormy seas of a classic Hollywood romance.
In Pandora and the Flying Dutchman, our narrator, archeologist Geoffrey Fielding, has far better luck with artefacts than with the murky waters of human emotion. "To understand one human soul," he declares, "Is like trying to empty the sea with a cup."
Fielding, like virtually every character in this MGM classic, is overwhelmed by the destructive power of love. In the small Spanish port of Esperanza where Fielding and other ex-pats have made their home, people are literally dying from it.
At the centre of this storm of romantic tragedy is the titular Pandora, played by then rising-star Ava Gardner. A mythic beauty, she intoxicates the men around her, toys with them and then discards them, unable to return their affections, watching apathetically as they destroy themselves and their lives for her pleasure. The measure of love, so the film dictates, is how much you are willing to sacrifice for it.
Pandora meets her match the day Captain Hendrick van der Zee sails into her harbour, the Flying Dutchman of Germanic legend (played with tortured grace by James Mason). To atone for past sins, the Dutchman is doomed to sail the world until he finds a woman who is willing to die for him. Pandora, it seems, is destined to oblige.
Made before Show Boat (1951) but released afterwards, Pandora and the Flying Dutchman cemented Gardner's reputation as one of the silver screen's most seductive young glamour queens. Filmed in breathtaking locations on Spain's Costa Brava, with lush cinematography by Jack Cardiff (The Red Shoes) and nearly operatic direction by Albert Lewin, the film is a sterling example of 1940s romantic melodrama.
"Curiously mystic" and "illuminated by inflamed Technicolor," according to The New York Times, it is a grand and distinctive film full of heady emotions, stunning vistas and the enthralling presence of an old world Hollywood star.
Newly restored, Pandora and the Flying Dutchman screens this Sunday and Monday on a 35mm print, in all its original, rich-hued glory. Treat yourself to an epic romance, as it was meant to be seen.
Published Thursday, 20 January 2011
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