The reviews are unanimous in their approval, and most of them are warm. Charles Laughton’s Captain Bligh is the performance nearly every critic returns to, described as savage, weighty and precise, and at least one thinks it the best work he has done. The scale of the MGM production draws almost as much praise, with reviewers from 1935 onward treating it as Hollywood spectacle done properly. Frank Lloyd’s direction and the screenplay are commended for keeping the story taut and the clash between Bligh and Clark Gable’s Christian at its centre.
The spread is narrow. The New Yorker is the coolest voice, finding the film a solid, fine job with inspired moments rather than a triumph, though it still places Laughton’s performance far above everything around it. The later critics read the film differently from the original ones, less as a sea adventure and more as a study of rank, cruelty and empire, but they do not like it any less for that.