Cheap Captains Courageous (Video) (Freddie Bartholomew, Spencer Tracy) (Victor Fleming) Price

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Customer Reviews of Captains Courageous

Spencer Tracy is magnificent as the Portugese cod fisherman, Manuel, and deserved his Oscar for this powerful and heartwarming (and heartbreaking) role. He more or less repeated the performance, accent and all, many years later in The Old Man and the Sea, a less successful film.

The sailing and fishing scenes are true to life. You can almost smell the salt air and feel the swells on the old Grand Bank fishing ground. Excellent supporting performances by John Carradine, Lionel Barrymore and Mickey Rooney. Freddie Bartholomew is perfectly type cast as a spoiled rich kid, but Melvyn Douglas wasted in a minor part as his spoiled rich dad.

A great film for the family!

Why don't "THEY" make movies like this one any longer?
"Captain's Courageous" is IT...the real thing....a truly great, heartfelt, classic film....arguably THE most emotionally compelling film of Hollywod's Golden Age.

Victor Fleming was known as a "MAN"S" director; so how did he produce one of the most perfectly paced, sensitive and outright BEAUTIFULLY loving "relationship" films of all time.....a love story of the most sacred kind between a boy and a man who becomes his surrogate father? It's simply amazing.

OK...you have to overcome your initial reaction to Spencer Tracy's pseudo-"Portegoosie" (as John Carradine says) accent; after that...sit back and prepare to lose yourself in moviemaking at its finest.

Freddie Bartholomew....incredible performance! The developing bond between him and Spence....superbly wrought! The heaviness, the heartbreak of the film's final 15 minutes.....I experience it as if it were actually happening to me every time I watch it! This is one of those films that I am happy to know simply EXISTS...it's sitting there on the shelf, ready to be experienced any time, and that gives me great satisfaction.

The scene of conflict with Tracy and John Carradine....then the uncomfortable but caring bond that develops bewteen Carradine and Freddie Bartholomew near the end.....the reuniting of Freddie with Melvin Douglas....has there ever been a more telling encounter? The final ceremony scene.....I've never been particularly moved by the hymn "Rock of Ages"; now I practically cry any time I even THINK about it.

Why Don't THEY make movies like this any longer????....BECAUSE THEY CAN'T! The world has changed..our values, our ways of viewing and expressing ourselves have become too "sophisticated" and cynical. Oh sure, Spielberg and others desperately TRY to go back to the sincerity and innocence of the age which produced "Captain's Courageous"....they do a decent job of conjuring, of IMITATING films of the Golden Age...but ...well, you simply CANNOT GO BACK.

If you want to experience the REAL THING----the sincere, honest, heartfelt emotional experience of a great story...GET THIS FILM.

AND FOR GOD"S SAKE (MGM, Turner...whoever..) GET IT OUT ON DVD! It's your RESPONSIBILITY to preserve these great films using the newest state-of-the-art technology. Believe me, when every last "BIG MOMMA's HOUSE" has been dead and buried as the CRAP that it is, "Captain's Courageous" will live on....and hopefully NOT only as a memory!

A marvelous tribute to fathers, sons, and friends.
Thank God this is in TCM's library; it was just aired this past Father's Day weekend, and I watched it for the first time in twenty years. It still resonates as a father/son film, a buddy film, a coming-of-age film, and an adventure story. Even the film's moment of transition (roughly 24 minutes in) seems to be paying homage to 'other world' adventures like THE WIZARD OF OZ and ALICE IN WONDERLAND- except that Alice is a bratty little boy this time- easily the brattiest kid you'll ever meet in Freddie Bartholomew. Once Bartholomew begins his adventure with fisherman Spencer Tracy so does an amazing battle of wits, dialogue, great script, most of all, awesome performances. (Who would've thought the macho Victor Fleming would direct a story with such sensitivity and warmth amidst not only the leads but supporting castmembers Melvyn Douglas, Lionel Barrymore, and the up-and-coming Mickey Rooney?) Even though Tracy capped (and deserved) the Oscar, 12-year-old Bartholomew is a revelation as he learns about humility, honor, friendship, and growing up throughout the entire film. (A bewitching sequence shows Bartholomew play a prank which backfires on him and nearly costs him his friendship with Tracy.) The film could be accused of datedness, but it is a testimony to the basic Kipling story that it has been filmed three times, twice for television. (Can a Broadway musical be far off?) Full of wonderful black-and-white cinematography and ocean-fog special effects, it needs to come to DVD immediately. And I guarantee you'll cry like a baby with a smile on your face.