Pandora and the Flying Dutchman

In a Spanish coastal village around 1930, the American singer Pandora (Ava Gardner) drives men out of their minds one after another. One poisons himself, a racing driver sends his car over the cliffs for her, and a jealous bullfighter vies for the beauty’s affections. But Pandora is drawn to a mysterious stranger: the “Flying Dutchman” Hendrick (James Mason). For centuries he has been condemned to sail the seas in his white yacht. Only a woman willing to die for him can set him free... Director Albert Lewin transposed the seafaring legend that inspired Wagner’s opera into the modern age and combined it with Greek myth and the romance of the bullfight. Jack Cardiff’s intoxicating Technicolor photography, the locations on the Costa Brava and props by the surrealist Man Ray give the film a dreamlike, almost otherworldly imagery that endures to this day. On its release, many considered the work overloaded and contrived. Today it is celebrated as a cult film. “Pandora and the Flying Dutchman” is regarded as one of the most idiosyncratic contributions to British post-war cinema and as a late offshoot of the romantic-surrealist tradition that also shaped the work of Powell and Pressburger.