“Pandora and the Flying Dutchman”, the fantasy film directed in 1951 by Albert Lewin, stars James Mason and Ava Gardner in the title role.
The year is 1930. Pandora Reynolds, an American singer on vacation in a coastal village in Spain, fascinates all the men around her.
One commits suicide before her eyes when she refuses to marry him, another – a racing driver – sacrifices the racing car he has been working on for two years by throwing it off a cliff, and another – a matador – feels a murderous jealousy. Pandora does not care. She is invariably indifferent, often insensitive, sometimes cruel because she knows nothing about the movements of the heart.
One evening, she sees a strange boat anchored in the bay, to which she is irresistibly drawn. She swims there and realizes that the deserted boat is inhabited only by a solitary captain, Hendrick Van der Zee (played by James Mason).
(Your choice. We have plenty of vessels here)
Van der Zee may be painting a portrait of the mythical Pandora who turns out to have the same features as the very real Pandora, but he remains completely indifferent to the beauty and charm of the woman in the flesh standing in front on him.
Van der Zee is soon invited to join the Summer life of Pandora’s group of friends, and she becomes more and more fascinated by this mysterious man.
One of their friends, Geoffrey, who is an archaeologist, has recently discovered an ancient Dutch manuscript that he is struggling to decipher, and which claims to be the logbook of the legendary Flying Dutchman.
When Geoffrey asks Van der Zee to help him decipher the manuscript, he understands that the latter is in fact reading his own memoirs and that his fate is absolutely tragic. In the 16th century, then a wealthy sea captain, he kills his beloved wife because he wrongly thinks that she is unfaithful. Sentenced to death by his peers, he denies God but is inexplicably saved the day before his execution. Having managed to reach his boat, he understands that he is condemned to wander the seas until the end of time, unless he understands the true meaning of love by finding a woman who loves him enough to sacrifice her life for him.
Van der Zee’s indifference towards Pandora actually hides strong feelings that he hardly allows himself to feel because he suspects that Pandora – who does not know the legend of the Flying Dutchman – would nevertheless be quite capable of dying of love for him. He therefore rejects her.
But will destiny, in its relentless march, not work to reunite the tragic lovers?
(Where the hell is the love of my life?)
(Wrong direction, should be behind you, babe)
(Now wondering what the fudge I’m doing here, as I am happily single. Now realizing that the Pandora movie wouldn’t exist if Pandora was a happy single woman and in no search of a so-called true love ending with suicide)
(Is it my Prince Charming? No, it’s my son, dragged into a lousy photoshoot during our vacay)
Ava Gardner, who is filmed in color for the first time, radiates in this dreamlike tale that also makes her discover a Europe that will fascinate her enough for her to settle there later in 1956.
It is Man Ray, then a friend of the director Albert Lewin, who is in reality the artist who painted the portrait touched with cubism of the mythical Pandora.
The film draws its inspiration from the legend of the Flying Dutchman, the most famous of ghost ships. The origin of the myth is difficult to untangle, the first known allusions being published in 1790 by the Scotsman John MacDonald, in 1795 by the Englishman George Barrington, then in 1821 in an unsigned text published by the British newspaper “The Blackwood Magazine”. In this version, a Dutch ship is caught in a violent storm while trying to round the Cape of Good Hope. The crew begs the captain to seek shelter, but he refuses and locks himself in his cabin, defying the sky to sink the ship. A luminous shape materializes in front of the terrified crew. The captain then insults the apparition, points a pistol at it and shoots, but the weapon explodes in his hand. A voice then rises to declare to him: “Since it pleases you so much to torment sailors, you will torment them, for you will be the evil spirit of the sea. Your ship will bring misfortune to those who see it”. The legend inspires a short story by the German poet Heinrich Heine in 1834, then an opera libretto by Richard Wagner in 1843. In 1881, it is the young Duke of York – future King of England under the name of George V – who reports having encountered the ghost ship while en route to Australia. In 1883, Victor Hugo alludes to it in “La Légende des Siècles”:
It’s the Dutchman, the boat
That the flaming finger marks!
The punished skiff!
It’s the wicked sail!
It’s the sinister pirate
Of infinity”
As we can see, the legend endures and has multiple versions. Albert Lewin draws a fantastic and romantic tale from it in “Pandora and the Flying Dutchman”.
(Enough now. It’s aperitivo time)
July 24, 2026
