Anne of the Indies

The Caribbean, the eighteenth century. Anne Providence captains a pirate ship; her crew is loyal to her and the British navy is looking for her. She takes a vessel and finds a Frenchman called Pierre aboard. He knows the sea and stays on the ship. Anne takes to him. Pierre has an assignment and a wife, and mentions neither. Jacques Tourneur directs. Jean Peters plays Anne, with Louis Jourdan, Debra Paget and Thomas Gomez as Blackbeard. The character has a real basis. A woman pirate called Anne Bonny lived in the Caribbean in the eighteenth century and the film draws on her name; the narrative is largely invented. What is interesting is that the woman captain is not presented as a woman. Anne is accepted as captain by her crew and the narrative gives that as a condition rather than an exception; the weakness begins when she falls in love. Tourneur is known for horror and noir; here he makes a colour adventure and uses the same method of tension in the shipboard scenes. The ending does not go where the genre expects and is hard for its period. It was made for 20th Century Fox in Technicolor. Who it is for: viewers who like classic pirate films and the cinema of Jacques Tourneur. Who it is not for: the plot is conventional, the romance is forced, and the sea scenes were built in the studio.