Continuing an occasional series about artworks in feature films. This is a minor entry but a worthwhile one if only to draw some attention to an unusual fantasy film by Albert Lewin, an equally unusual director. Pandora and the Flying Dutchman was made in 1951, a British film with an American star (Ava Gardner) and a Spanish setting. Gardner plays Pandora Reynolds, an American nightclub singer living in the coastal town of Esperanza where she’s the centre of attention for the small colony of stuffy middle-class Brits who also live there. Like her mythical namesake, Pandora is a source of endless trouble, only in this case the evils are the result of the romantic chaos she provokes. Her own romantic desires are upset when a mysterious yacht anchors off the coast, its sole occupant being Hendrik van der Zee (James Mason) who we soon learn is the Flying Dutchman of legend, doomed to sail the seas until he can find salvation in the love of a woman who will die for him.
Pandora with one of the many statues that surround the home of Fielding the archaeologist.
Lewin’s film was restored recently after having been out of circulation for many years. I’d been intending to see it again after reading about the restoration which could only be an improvement on the terrible copy that used to turn up late at night on British TV. Further impetus was prompted by a book review for The Spectator in which Michael Moorcock notes similarities between the film and the stories by JG Ballard which were collected as Vermilion Sands. I’ve never seen Ballard mention the film but the Vermilion Sands stories have long been favourites of mine. The film moved to the top of the viewing list.
Esperanza or Vermilion Sands? Hendrik is lured by Pandora’s piano-playing.
The key connection to Ballard is Surrealist (or-pre-Surrealist) painting, a detail of Pandora and the Flying Dutchman that I’d forgotten all about. Albert Lewin only directed six films; he also wrote each one, and was very determined in his attempts to bring a touch of artistic class to Anglophone cinema. Pandora and the Flying Dutchman was his fourth feature after The Moon and Sixpence and The Picture of Dorian Gray—each an adaptation of a novel where painting is an important element of the story—and The Private Affairs of Bel Ami, a film that was promoted with a Surrealist painting competition on the theme of the temptation of St Anthony. Max Ernst won the competition, and his picture appears at the end of the film, a colour insert in an otherwise black-and-white feature. Lewin did the same for The Picture of Dorian Gray, another black-and-white film where the portrait paintings (including Ivan Albright’s unforgettably corrupted canvas) are shown in colour inserts.
Continue reading “Art on film: Pandora and the Flying Dutchman”
