The Captain's Paradise (1953)

25 January 2021

This is an lesser known film of Alec Guinness's, and stars him as a captain who thinks he "found Paradise" by being a bigamist. Running a passenger ship between Gibraltar and Kalique, the captain also tried to keep his relationships between these two wives distinct: rigid domesticity one one side, and late night partying on the other.
Although this film was apparently well received in 1953 (in the UK, and with some tweaks for US audiences), I don't think this film aged well. I don't think polygamy plot devices age well in general... but I think what is more dated is the Captain's subterfuge getting his wives to adhere to the limited aspects of gender roles he defined for them. Although the film has most characters breaking out of these roles, the captain does not appear to. To that end, I don't think this film ages well, and is probably the least interesting of the films in this collection.
For its time, it works as a relatively lighthearted story, but thankfully for Alec Guinness he has many films eclipsing this one in his oeuvre, like The Ladykillers, The Bridge on the River Kwai, Lawrence of Arabia, and Star Wars. I'd easily recommend most of those over this one. 5/10