Pitcairn Island Today (1935) User Reviews

Interesting but crowded by the production code preachiness

[AlsExGal · 7/10 · 23 November 2018]

The American production code, instituted in 1934, dealt with lots of things besides sex in motion pictures. It didn't allow men of the cloth to be portrayed negatively, nor business men to appear greedy, nor did it allow the glorification of armed rebellion. So, besides prudishness, there must have been more than just a little fear during this stage of the Great Depression that the starving American people might start another revolution.

"Mutiny on the Bounty" did not really paint the idea of rebellion in a positive light, but it did paint British naval justice in a rather harsh light. Men who didn't rebel and returned to England were tried for treason and the actual mutineers sailed away to Pitcairn Island, never to face any judicial repercussions for their acts.

Too late to make a long story short, maybe that is why this interesting and informative little short about Pitcairn Island in 1935 gets so preachy - to make up for the rather libertine message of MOTB. It talks about how the inhabitants of Pitcairn Island are all descendants of the mutineers and their islander wives. Thus you have things like one interesting wedding announcement that says "Mr. X Christian will be married to Miss Y Christian on Saturday. Let anybody who has reason why these two should not be wed report to the registry office." It shows one girl getting water from a well and mentions that the vase she is using is actually from the Bounty itself.

Then it oddly starts going into the ill effects that all of the inbreeding has had on the descendents of the mutineers and somehow tries to make this the "sins of the fathers", talking about "their evil deed" of mutiny. Funny how no mention is made of the cruelty of Captain Bligh who brought on their rebellion.

Finally it mentions how Mr. Christian, leader of the mutineers spent his final years sullen, alone, and unhappy. Hey, with half of the islanders seemingly named "Christian" he couldn't have been THAT unhappy or alone! I'd recommend this short. Just try to ignore the preaching and pay attention to the actual facts revealed.

Documentary Error

[gbev44-1 · 6/10 · 8 July 2008]

The film is an interesting look at Pitcairn Island... however it inaccurately portrays the religious beliefs of the islanders.

The narrator refers to them as followers of "The Church of England" and that "Sunday is the holiest of days" to the islanders, but in the 1890's the islanders converted to the Seventh-day Adventist church which observes Saturday as the Sabbath.

Most Pitcairn residents have now given up Christianity altogether, but they still observe Saturday as a day of rest.

This is either a case of bad research by the filmmakers or a willful omission.

fascinating remoteness

[SnoopyStyle · 7/10 · 1 July 2023]

In 1787, HMS The Bounty sets off into the South Pacific. Fletcher Christian leads a mutiny against the "righteous" William Bligh. The mutineers and their South Pacific followers settle upon Pitcairn Island. This documentary returns to that island to see the results.

Carey Wilson is doing the standard old style narration. The locals get screen time, but they don't get to voice anything. The narrator puts down almost everything on the island including the inbred locals. He's doing yeoman's work for the British Empire in deriding the mutineers and their descendants. It's still fascinating to peek into this small remote location.

Nice Look at the Island

[Michael_Elliott · 7 November 2010]

Pitcairn Island Today (1935)

*** (out of 4)

One of two shorts MGM made to show some backstory to their MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY. This one here takes a look at the island today as we are show some relatives to the original story as well as seeing footage of where the original Mutiny men stayed. Apparently the fate of the men is pretty much looked over here but I guess that's because all but one of them were eventually murdered. I guess one could understand MGM not wanting to show off the ugliness of this beautiful island but either way one shouldn't be watching this for some sort of history lesson. I think the film works best as just an item showing off the island, its people and some of the historic places on it. There's certainly nothing ground breaking here but I think it's a fitting short to watch after seeing the Clark Gable film.

Promotional Short

[boblipton · 6/10 · 1 July 2023]

This short subject was produced by MGM to promote their big picture of the year, multiple-Oscar-winner MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY. Carey Wilson was credited as a writer on that movie, and he wrote and narrated this short.

What happened to the mutineers and their women? Twenty-seven of them made it to Pitcairn Island; they were not discovered for decades, by which time only one of the mutineers was still alive.

At the time this short was made, about fifty families lived on the island. Their numbers included one guy who came to the island and stayed.

There are a couple of errors here. The wreckage of the Bounty is shown, although it was not discovered until well after this movie, and much is made of the inbreeding. But it's an interesting little portrait of an isolated society.

An interesting look at the remote island retreat of the Bounty mutineers

[SimonJack · 7/10 · 4 October 2022]

For 1935, this is a very good and interesting documentary. MGM actually had a crew sail to Pitcairn Island to film the locale, residents and their activities. All just to make a 10-minute short film. It was as preview in theaters to promote the feature film, "Mutiny on the Bounty."

"Pitcairn Island Today" almost runs like a newsreel that was part of the standard package in theaters through the mid-20th century. It included the short news documentary from around the world, previews of coming shows, and a cartoon. I remember as a kid and teenager back then that we could allow up to 15 minutes after a published show time to get there before the feature film started. That came in handy at times when someone was running late for a date, had car trouble, or couldn't find a parking space close to the theater..

MGM did a good job researching for the documentary, and lining up some of the people for the shooting. It's very interesting seeing the descendants of some of the HMS Bounty mutineers, more than 150 years after the mutiny. They have the surnames of Christian. McCoy, Young, Warren and Clark. Carey Wilson narrates the film.

The population of Pitcairn Island peaked at 233 in 1937. "Mutiny on the Bounty" brought considerable tourist trade to the small island for many years. But, in time, the population began to emigrate, especially to New Zealand. While it eventually became part of a British colony, the population by 2022 had declined to 50.

This film focuses on the survival, development, social growth and success of the people who have lived on Pitcairn since 1790. But the island's history reveals a quite different picture and makes for interesting reading. After the 1790 landing by nine Bounty mutineers and 21 Tahitians, the residents enjoyed a short period of calm and peace as they settled in. But feuding soon broke out, and through the mid-19th century, the island history was raucous and bloody.

The same bunch of deplorable . . .

[oscaralbert · 5/10 · 18 December 2018]

. . . racists responsible a few years later for the mendaciously revisionist GONE WITH THE WIND rewrite history to spout more anti-Black venom in the thankfully briefer PITCAIRN ISLAND TODAY. The nefarious narrator of PITCAIRN brazenly admits here that the bad ship Bounty's mission was to help perpetrate the enslavement of Tahiti's Brown Folks by foisting off an invasive plant called "breadfruit" upon them. This voice-over miscreant's script slanders courageous Freedom Fighter "Fletcher Christian" with every other grunt, making no reference to the MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY scene in which Christian's Soldiers triumphantly send the demonic breadfruit seedlings down to Davy Jones' Locker. The miserly greedy millionaires mob at the sign of the Bellowing Cat never failed to get on the wrong side of History with fare such as GWTW and PITCAIRN ISLAND TODAY. P.I.T. is chock full of demeaning racial epithets, spiteful condescending slurs, and nasty cracks which should NEVER have been tolerated in a Civilized Society. It would be truly wonderful to send such backwards bozos to PITCAIRN ISLAND TODAY!!

A Fitting Coda

[bkoganbing · 8/10 · 22 June 2008]

This over seventy year old short documentary isn't exactly a contemporary record of life on the isolated Pitcairn Island. Still it's an interesting view of how life evolved up to the middle of the 20th Century for the Bounty descendants.

Naturally we get to meet a whole lot of people named Christian, some named Quintal, some named McCoy names familiar to those who've read Nordhoff&Hall's novel and have seen more or more of the films about the most famous mutiny in history.

Though it's not recorded in any of the films dealing with the mutiny the mutineers were in fact all killed save one in quarrels with the natives over the native women. Only a fellow named John Adams of the mutineers was actually around when Pitcairn was rediscovered and re-charted by the geographers. I guess at that point it wasn't worth the effort for the Admiralty to open up that old can of worms again.

In 1935 life still looked pretty rugged, but the Pitcairners seem to have made a nice little society for themselves. It's still a forbidding landscape with no natural harbor. That and because it was not chartered right on the maps the Royal Navy was using at the time was the reason that Fletcher Christian chose the place as their new home.

Pitcairn Island Today remains a fine documentary and a nice coda to the MGM film that won for Best Picture of 1935

Another short subject on Pitcairn settlers...

[Doylenf · 5/10 · 16 May 2009]

This is a very brief look at the story behind "Mutiny on the Bounty" of the Pitcairn settlers on PITCAIRN ISLAND TODAY.

Again, it's narrated by Carey Wilson who calls it one of the most tragic stories in the history of the British navy.

Eighteen men remained aboard the Mutiny as it returned to Tahiti, and then went on to Pitcairn Island where they burned the ship and made a new life for themselves on the island.

A glimpse of the Adams town settlement in houses along the rocky hillside, combined with a few scenes of the men and women going about their daily tasks--and the film is over.

A meager look at a very important slice of history. If you've seen the other short subject narrated by Carey Wilson on the same subject, no need to watch this.

Secluded sanctuary

[nickenchuggets · 8/10 · 4 July 2023]

Geographically, islands that few people know about are some of the most interesting places to get educated on. This short from MGM focuses on Pitcairn Island; a place that will be forever associated with one of the Royal Navy's greatest tragedies. The Bounty, a British ship attempting to sail to Tahiti in order to bring food to slaves working in the West Indies, was overtaken by a revolt in the year 1787. The captain, William Bligh, was a firm believer in hierarchy and order, so much so that the crew mutinied against him under a mate named Fletcher Christian. The Bounty eventually goes back to tahiti, and the crew marry native women. As anybody would guess, Tahiti is a beautiful place whose splendor is rivalled by very few locations on Earth, but Fletcher and the others know that even in a remote island like this, british authorities would eventually come for them and they would be hanged for piracy. This is why the crew decided to come to Pitcairn Island, many miles southeast of tahiti, and guarded by coral reefs. Even now, the wrecks of many ships can be seen around the island, a testament to the perils of its surrounding rock formations. Fletcher took some useful items from the Bounty, then sank the ship so the royal navy couldn't trace him. 150 years later, the descendants of Fletcher and the other crewmen still live on the island, having never seen a proper civilization. The islands only village is Adamstown, precariously placed on a ledge over the ocean. Many of the houses on pitcairn are made of ship parts. Although they are related to the original settlers who came on the Bounty, the people living on the island today look very different as a result of inbreeding and ethnic mixing between Europeans and tahitians. William Christian, great grandson of Fletcher, is shown working the fields. The village blacksmith still uses smithing items that came from the Bounty a century and a half earlier. We learn that despite being isolated from every civilization on earth, the residents of pitcairn follow Christianity after it was introduced to them by John Adams; the Bounty's only survivor. After a baby on the island falls ill, volunteers take turns lighting a flaming beacon on the coast all night so that a passing ship might notice it. It seems unbelievable, but a lone ship does actually come across the beacon and sends a doctor to help. And so, life continues on pitcairn island, a place unaffected by the savage nature of the outside world, but was ironically created by an act of violence that occurred on a ship very long ago. This is a pretty nice short. It's kind of hypocritical how the narrator tends to gloss over Bligh's oppressiveness which caused the revolt in the first place and only mentions the "unforgivable crimes" of the sailors, but the facts presented are of great importance to history. The islanders have in their possession priceless relics taken from the ship, things that would be worth a king's ransom to any self-respecting museum, but the islanders care little about their monetary value. Everything they could ever want is already on the island. Access to technology may be exciting, but as anyone today knows, it has led to all sorts of problems. Many would give anything to live in a place like pitcairn, secluded from society. I probably wouldn't want to live there, but it's fun to visit.