Americas 250th Birthday Cinemathon #2: The Plymouth Adventure

 

I first watched a film about the first successful English colony at Jamestown, so I thought it only natural to find a movie about the Puritan Pilgrims who settled at Plymouth (in what is now Massachusetts). The Plymouth Adventure is not really about the colony itself (the early history of that settlement is covered briefly in the last ten minutes), but the voyage aboard the Mayflower. The first act concerns the Pilgrims trying to leave for America, with the majority of the rest of the film focusing on tensions between the rough-hewn sailors and the more polished Pilgrims, tensions which weren’t really much of a thing in real life.

The film gets points for featuring a cast virtually made up of real historical figures, though some are just faces put to names of the Mayflower’s list of crew and passengers. It’s more of an ensemble piece, but Spencer Tracy as Captain Christopher Jones does tend to command the screen. In real life Jones was easy to get along with and was a devoted family man, but to create drama the movie turns him into a womanizing and often drunk grouch who can’t stand the religious Puritans.

Leo Genn plays major Puritan figure William Bradford while Gene Tierney plays his wife Dorothy Bradford (more on her in a bit). Barry Jones takes the role of the Pilgrims’ leader William Brewster, who literally has to sneak aboard in order to avoid arrest for his religious ideals. Finally Van Johnson plays carpenter John Alden, who at first doesn’t quite fit in with either the sailors or the Pilgrims, but gravitates towards the latter when he falls in love with Priscilla Mullins (they got married in real life and produced the first birth in Plymouth).

The Plymouth Adventure is alright. Despite a great cast and some music from Miklos Rozsa, it never really gets great. The real Mayflower voyage had problems, with the heavy storms that almost wrecked the ship being shown. However, the director or screenwriter evidently thought this wasn’t enough drama. This results in the film’s worst aspect, a fictitious emotional affair between Christopher Jones and Dorothy Bradford. In real life Dorothy fell overboard and drowned, but the film presents it as a suicide because she’s in love with two men. What bunch of sappy nonsense.

Captain Christopher Jones (Spencer Tracy) sits on shore after landing in New England.

There is also a 1979 TV movie with Anthony Hopkins. Maybe it’s more enjoyable than Plymouth Adventure, which feels it has to manufacture conflict and drama in an attempt to create an exciting story. This is an alright movie if you have time, but not something I would recommend to anybody.

Rating: 5/10

Here's a link to one of those old long trailers which were known for spoiling most of the movie.