Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

"Captain's Courageous" is IT...the real thing....a truly great, heartfelt, classic film....arguably THE most emotionally compelling film of Hollywod's Golden Age. Victor Fleming was known as a "MAN"S" director; so how did he produce one of the most perfectly paced, sensitive and outright BEAUTIFULLY loving "relationship" films of all time.....a story of a profound bond between a boy and a man who becomes his surrogate father? It's simply amazing. OK...you have to overcome your initial reaction to Spencer Tracy's pseudo-"Portegoosie" (as John Carradine says) accent; after that...sit back and prepare to lose yourself in moviemaking at its finest. Freddie Bartholomew....incredible performance! The growing bond between him and Spence....superbly wrought! The heaviness, the heartbreak of the film's final 15 minutes.....I experience it as if it were actually happening to me every time I watch it! This is one of those films that I am happy to know simply EXISTS...it's sitting there on the shelf, ready to be experienced any time, and that gives me great satisfaction. The scene of conflict with Tracy and John Carradine....then the uncomfortable but caring bond that develops bewteen Carradine and Freddie Bartholomew near the end.....the reuniting of Freddie with Melvin Douglas....has there ever been a more revealing encounter? The final ceremony scene.....I've never been particularly moved by the hymn "Rock of Ages"; now the emotions well up when I even THINK about it. Why Don't THEY make movies like this any longer????....BECAUSE THEY CAN'T! The world has changed..our values, our ways of viewing and expressing ourselves have become too "sophisticated" and cynical. Oh sure, Spielberg and others desperately TRY to go back to the sincerity and innocence of the age which produced "Captain's Courageous"....they do a decent job of conjuring, of IMITATING films of the Golden Age...but ...well, you simply CANNOT GO BACK. If you want to experience the REAL THING----the sincere, honest, heartfelt emotional experience of a great story...GET THIS FILM. AND FOR GOD"S SAKE (MGM, Turner...whoever..) GET IT OUT ON DVD! It's your RESPONSIBILITY to preserve these great films using the newest state-of-the-art technology. Believe me, when every last "BIG MOMMA's HOUSE" has been dead and buried as the CRAP that it is, "Captain's Courageous" will live on....and hopefully NOT only as a memory!