Patrick McElroy on PANDORA & THE FLYING DUTCHMAN (1951, dir by Albert Lewin, UK)

The other night I revisited Albert Lewin’s underrated gem Pandora and the Flying Dutchman, which was released 70 years ago, several decades later I was still taken in by the romantic beauty of it.

Lewin’s other films include The Picture of Dorian Gray, and The Private Affairs of Bel Ami, so his films do have the romanticism, but what this film has is a sense of fantasy that’s lacking in the others. The movie was photographed by the master cinematographer Jack Cardiff, whose other credits include the films of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. In the documentary on Cardiff, Martin Scorsese states that he used to think this was one of their films when he was younger. It’s not surprising to see why, it captures the vibrant colors, the passion, the intellectual characters, the fantasy, and the romance of their films.

The movie takes place in a fictitious Spanish port called Esperanza, and it focuses on a nightclub singer Pandora (Ava Gardner), who the men are obsessed over, Geoffrey an Archaeologist, and Stephen (Nigel Patrick) a land speed racer who she’s engaged to be married to. Pandora one-night swims out to a yacht to find a Dutch captain Hendrik, who’s really the Flying Dutchman, the legend goes that love will make him mortal, so he won’t have to repeat his life. Geoffrey is the only one to figure this out, and he begins to study him.

The rest of the film is a film about sacrifice and passion. Lewin only made a few films, but this is probably my favorite of his, his films take place in a certain time and setting, and the ways in which the characters must obey them. The films leads in the film are stunning, Mason often played a man of practicality, here he plays the man of ideals, and Gardner has probably never been more beautifully photographed. Watching a film like this makes one long for this sense of romanticism that’s been absent from the screen for so many decades.

Patrick McElroy is a movie writer and movie lover based in Los Angeles. Check out his other writing at: https://www.facebook.com/patrick.mcelroy.3726 or his IG: @mcelroy.patrick