Captain from Castile Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		3.0
Overall		4.0

Captain from Castile Blu-ray Movie Review

Don't know much about history. . .

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman January 18, 2018

There’s a charming supplement ported over to this Blu-ray release of Captain from Castile where four of Tyrone Power’s former leading ladies reminisce about the iconic star, with one of the women claiming he was the “Tom Cruise of his day”. Well, maybe — maybe not. Power certainly had the charisma and generally stolid comportment of Cruise, and he was just as certainly as popular in his heyday as Cruise was in his, but Power never really had the “baggage” that Cruise has had to deal with over his by now long career, what with things like his now infamous rants against psychiatry and his linked and (to some, at least) questionable connections to Scientology. While still a major idol in 1947, when Captain from Castile was released, it’s at least arguable that Power’s star power was just starting to show signs of fading, something that may have been accelerated by his absence from films for several years due to his participation in World War II. Oddly, something else that may have played into at least the perception of Power as a “former matinee idol” was Power’s own desire to branch out into other kinds of films, as evidenced by his 1946 entry The Razor's Edge, a film that was miles apart from many of Power’s pre-World War II “swashbuckler” (or other action adventure) offerings. Captain from Castile kinda sorta fits into that “swashbuckler” mode, at least in passing, but it’s also a rather curious combo platter of pseudo history and pomp and circumstance, cloaked in “glorious Technicolor” and featuring a glut of rather scenic location work in a variety of Mexican locations. The film was based on a gigantic bestseller by Samuel Shellabarger (I’m proud to state I’m distantly related to the author on my mother’s side), and it had all the earmarks of an epic success as it went into production in 1946. But as Rudy Behlmer discusses in the commentary also ported over to this Blu-ray release, a rather interesting phenomenon took hold of American audiences in the wake of World War II, one that perhaps is glossed over when historians track the attrition of cinema audiences as television took hold. While 1946 was a banner year for box office receipts, there was something of a “crash” starting in 1947 (Captain from Castile was released very late in 1947), which was really before television had become a truly national presence. That may have contributed to the fact that Captain from Castile, for all its built in allure, reportedly failed to recoup its (perhaps immense) production costs, despite the fact that Variety reported it as the tenth biggest earner of 1948 (the bulk of its theatrical presentation).

As is also discussed in the commentary, the original source novel upon which Captain from Castile is based was a huge, sprawling affair that was considerably pared down for its cinematic adaptation. That may be one reason why certain contextualizations are pretty much left to the viewer to figure out. Power stars as Pedro de Vargas, an early 16th century Spanish adventurer who in the first few minutes of the film has interchanges both with a slave named Coatl (Jay Silverheels of Tonto fame) and a woman named Catana Pérez (Jean Peters). Pedro spends the first several minutes of Captain from Castile tooling around on his horse and basically bumping into characters who will later figure into the story. Chief among these is Juan Garcia (Lee J. Cobb, looking spectacularly ill at ease in leggings), who alerts Pedro to the wonders of the “New World”.

Coatl’s disturbing lash scars lacing his back hint at the masochistic tendencies of one Diego del Silva (John Sutton), a martinet attempting to keep perceived “heretics” in line during the Inquisition, and of course Pedro and his family run afoul of the official, leading to imprisonment. Kind of interestingly, Captain from Castile rather quickly dispenses with this supposedly important plot point, with the upshot being there’s (ostensibly) one less villain in the film and Pedro, Juan and Catana decide to hightail it to Cuba. Fortunately for them, there’s this little expedition getting underway headed by some guy named Hernán Cortes (Cesar Romero), which leads to a series of adventures in Mexico.

Captain from Castile is almost relentlessly gorgeous to watch, but it tends to try to stuff so many competing plot points into its story, especially once everyone gets to Mexico, that some may feel that even more “paring” of Shellabarger’s novel might have helped things. There are any number of sidebars this film gets into, including everything from a love spell Catana puts on Pedro, to the whole subtext of Spaniards marauding through Mesoamerica and all that that entailed, but there’s no convincing through line focusing the screenplay. Instead, the film tends to play out as a series of admittedly often exciting vignettes, helped along by the immense charisma of Power. Peters is certainly gorgeous, but she seems a little uncertain at times, perhaps because this was her first feature. Romero is kind of fun as Cortes, but I have to say for some who are interested in the whole history of how the “Method” came to the United States, there’s really nothing to match the decidedly outré sight of Lee J. Cobb in bright blue spandex and a garish blonde hairdo, desperately searching for some kind of sense memory to inform his performance.

Captain from Castile Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Captain from Castile is presented on Blu-ray with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.37:1. The history of Fox and its original Technicolor elements from this era is the stuff of (not all that great) legend, so I won't rehash them here, other than to say that while not optimal, to my eyes this is actually one of the nicer looking transfers of a supposed Technicolor Fox film from this general time frame. Things aren't quite right quite a bit of the time, but they come awfully close a commendably large amount of time, with yellows, blues and reds actually resonating fairly well, as can be seen in several of the screenshots accompanying this review. Still, the color space seems just a bit skewed at times, with many scenes looking slightly brown (making those "Technicolor reds" more of an orange), and with some outdoor scenes having a slightly green-yellowish undertone. Several of the night and/or day for night scenes are a bit on the blue side (as can be seen in a couple of the screenshots I've uploaded to the review). While the colors never quite make it to true Technicolor levels, on the whole the rest of the transfer is great looking, with good detail levels in close-ups (look at the textures on some of the costumes in the screenshots) and an absence of any major damage.

Captain from Castile Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Captain from Castile has two DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 tracks, though one is listed as a DTS-HD Master Audio 1.0 track. I frankly don't hear a huge difference between the two in terms of any supposed stereo widening, but to my ears the first track is not at the same amplitude levels as the second, mono, track. Both tracks offer good support for the film's dialogue and especially for Alfred Newman's score, which is one of his finest and which contributes a lot of energy to the listening experience.

Captain from Castile Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Most, but not all, of the supplements included on the Cinema Classics DVD of Captain from Castile which was included in the old Tyrone Power boxed set have been ported over to this release. Missing are the Advertising Gallery and Still Gallery.

• Tyrone Power: The Last Idol (480i; 45:01) is culled from the old Biography series, and offers that franchise's typically excellent if often kind of generalist overview of the actor's life and work.


• Tyrone Power and His Leading Ladies (480i; 12:25) is a much more "personal" featurette, with nice (if too brief) interviews with four of Ty's leading ladies, Patricia Neal, Jayne Meadows, Terry Moore and Coleen Gray. As your resident Frances Farmer obsessive, I'll point out that there are also a couple of brief glimpses of Frances with Ty in scenes from Son of Fury: The Story of Benjamin Blake, the last film she finished before her years of institutionalization.


• Original Theatrical Trailer (480p; 2:46) is in black and white.


• Audio Commentary features Rudy Behlmer, Jon Burlingame and Nick Redman.


• Isolated Score Track offers Alfred Newman's sumptuous music in DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0.

Captain from Castile Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

By the time you have Tyrone Power and Lee J. Cobb skirmishing in a Mesoamerican pyramid, Captain from Castile has probably lost whatever tenuous tether it had to actual history to begin with, but it hardly matters. This is grand moviemaking that may not have much narrative focus, but which still offers stunning scenery, an interesting (if not exactly accurate) historical setting, and, of course, Tyrone Power. Fox has done what it can with less than optimal elements, and Captain from Castile comes Recommended.