PIRATES OF CAPRI (1949)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*

CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *sociological*

Most film-fans know director Edgar G' Ulmer for his famous Universal horror-film THE BLACK CAT or for his handful of 1950s SF-films, such as THE MAN FROM PLANET X. But he did dip his directorial oar into swashbuckling waters occasionally, and PIRATES OF CAPRI was, oddly enough, his second outing with a masked swashbuckler, following 1946's THE WIFE OF MONTE CRISTO.

CAPRI's credits are complicated by the fact that the film wasn't the usual Hollywood product, but was shot in Italy with an uncredited Italian co-director. That collaboration aside, Ulmer does seem to attempting a more painterly approach to an adventure-story. Possibly this was because the CAPRI project was shot in black-and-white, at a time when the majority of swashbucklers, even the cheap ones, were filmed in color. At times some of the shots are quite reminiscent of the delirious black-and-white contrasts from BLACK CAT. 

On the other hand, the film is an extremely derivative take on the Zorro mythos, but with less effectiveness. In 1798, the ships of Naples-- where rules a queen, Maria Carolina (Binnie Barnes)-- are continually raided by a masked pirate, Captain Sirocco (Louis Hayward). In the raid that begins the story-- actually the only pirate-action in the movie-- Sirocco encounters a lovely young noblewoman, Mercedes (Mariella Lotti),  who's on the way to Naples to meet one Count Amalfi for an arranged marriage. The masked pirate disparages Amalfi to Mercedes, but it turns out to be Sirocco's private joke, for the foppish fellow Mercedes later encounters at court is none other than the captain's secret identity.

In the original Zorro, the hero plays a languid aristocrat so that no one in Old California will suspect his double identity and so threaten himself and his family. Amalfi's motive is a little more confused. He's not literally a count, but assumed the title after his brother, the real royalty, was slain in Naples for abetting revolutionaries. Thus he would seem to be diametrically opposed to the example of the Scarlet Pimpernel, who was all about saving royals from rebels. Yet strangely, though Amalfi has good reason to hate the aristocracy, he doesn't despise Maria Carolina. He deems her an innocent, and the real tyrants are her ministers and her law enforcer Baron Holstein. At any rate, Amalfi uses his dandy-persona to spy on the court in order to gather info for more raids.

However, most of the film involves nasty Holstein trying various strategies to destroy Sirocco's network of operatives. Despite some decent dialogue the film as a whole is stodgy and stuffy, and Hayward's borderline-effeminate imitation of Leslie Howard's Scarlet Pimpernel is overdone by half. It's modestly interesting that Amalfi uses his masked persona as an alter ego to romance Mercedes, but by 1949 this was par for the course. Hayward does a good job with a climactic swordfight against his main enemy, enlivened a bit by being set on a theatrical stage.