Production
Originally planned as an adaptation of Rafael Sabatini's 1915 novel The Sea Hawk, the film utilized an entirely different story inspired by the exploits of Sir Francis Drake, unlike the 1924 silent film adaptation, which was fairly faithful to Sabatini's plot.
Adaptations of the novel were written by Richard Neville and Delmer Daves before Seton I Miller wrote a basically new story called Beggars of the Sea based on Sir Francis Drake. Sabatini's name was still used in promotional materials however as it was felt it had commercial value. Howard Koch then reworked Miller's script while still keeping the basic structure and story.
The speech the Queen gives at the close of the film was, sub silentio, meant to inspire the viewing British audience, which was already mired in the grip of the Second World War. Suggestions that it was the duty of all free men to defend liberty, and that the world did not belong to any one man (an obvious insinuation of Hitler's wish to conquer Europe) were rousing.
Read more about this topic: The Sea Hawk (1940 film)
Famous quotes containing the word production:
“In the production of the necessaries of life Nature is ready enough to assist man.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“An art whose limits depend on a moving image, mass audience, and industrial production is bound to differ from an art whose limits depend on language, a limited audience, and individual creation. In short, the filmed novel, in spite of certain resemblances, will inevitably become a different artistic entity from the novel on which it is based.”
—George Bluestone, U.S. educator, critic. “The Limits of the Novel and the Limits of the Film,” Novels Into Film, Johns Hopkins Press (1957)
“I really know nothing more criminal, more mean, and more ridiculous than lying. It is the production either of malice, cowardice, or vanity; and generally misses of its aim in every one of these views; for lies are always detected, sooner or later.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)