This is one of those Romances of the South Seas that MGM liked to offer its patrons every year or so. This one is based on Herman Melville's TYPEE, which I was spared in college and never got around to reading on my own.
I'll take a moment to speculate that the reason Melville was so adaptable to the movies was that at the heart of his boring, obsessively-detailed novels, there was always a good adventure yarn. Screenwriter John Farrow has whittled this one down to a Rousseau-style Romance of the Noble Savage. The Polynesian lovers are played by Mala, who was an Inuit, and Lotus Long, who hailed from exotic Atlantic City. Richard Thorpe, beginning his long career for Metro, got good performances out of the leads, who speak in what I guess is a Polynesian language, extensively subtitled. They undergo courtship, traders who kidnap Mala to work in a collapsing guano mine, and a big storm. Will true love be denied? While the screenplay is hobbled by the Production Code, the photography is superlative, shot by location specialist Clyde de Vinna. If you can turn your ears off, you'll see a fine little silent film here, with some spectacular views.
I'll take a moment to speculate that the reason Melville was so adaptable to the movies was that at the heart of his boring, obsessively-detailed novels, there was always a good adventure yarn. Screenwriter John Farrow has whittled this one down to a Rousseau-style Romance of the Noble Savage. The Polynesian lovers are played by Mala, who was an Inuit, and Lotus Long, who hailed from exotic Atlantic City. Richard Thorpe, beginning his long career for Metro, got good performances out of the leads, who speak in what I guess is a Polynesian language, extensively subtitled. They undergo courtship, traders who kidnap Mala to work in a collapsing guano mine, and a big storm. Will true love be denied? While the screenplay is hobbled by the Production Code, the photography is superlative, shot by location specialist Clyde de Vinna. If you can turn your ears off, you'll see a fine little silent film here, with some spectacular views.