The Walshian hero is less interested in the why or the how than in the what. He is always plunging into the unknown, and he is never too sure what he will find there.
--Andrew Sarris
Raoul Walsh's film, I have been told by Susan, is fairly close to the spirit and the plots of C.S. Forester's eleven Hornblower novels, though it is unclear how much Forester contributed to the screenplay; the credits say "adapted by C.S. Forester", though three other screenwriters are also credited. In any case Gregory Peck makes an excellent Horatio Hornblower; he's taciturn but shows his feeling through facial expressiveness and the entries in his logbook. Hornblower returns from the sea to find his wife had died after giving birth to their son and he reads a letter his wife wrote; we hear her voice as the camera slowly pans the furniture of their living room; they had only been together "for fifteen months in fifteen years." Hornblower feels not only sadness but guilt for falling in love with his passenger Lady Barbara on his way home.
The film takes place during the Napoleonic Wars in 1807 and was filmed in France and England, with superb art direction by Thomas Morahan (he had done Hitchcock's Under Capricorn in 1949), cinematography by Guy Green, with beautiful blues of sky, sea and Hornblower's coat, and a rousing (if sometimes obvious) score by Robert Farnon. The battles at sea are impressively choreographed by Walsh, with some of the most effective use of miniatures I have ever seen, with editing by veteran Jack Harris. Walsh demonstrates once again his ability to combine spectacle with intimacy.
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