Watching a John Ford film tickles me with the same excitement than a bar crawl... while a quick glimpse on the credits have that "drinks are on me" effect that gives its extra flavor to the beer. And from the synopsis, I could see that was a movie made for the beauty of the setting and its escapist value, which unburdened my mind from high expectations... except for fun. After all, John Ford had just added "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" to the top shelf of his body of work and I didn't expect two masterpieces in a row ("Valance" would be his last anyway).
But if the veteran director is entitled to concoct a few 'potboilers', he stills knows how to serve the starters: "Boats" Gillhooley, Lee Marvin as a US navy veteran, spots Haleakaloha (a name I could only copy-paste) and after punching the sailor who didn't want to call there as promised, he jumps from the freighter and swims to the island. His dive splashes the last doubts one misinformed viewer would still have: this is the lighthearted Ford. The 'splash' also says something about the magnetic power of the island as there must be some history buried in these golden sands. The only reservation is that it misleads the viewer on the role Marvin will occupy in the film: if anything, he's the closest to a comic relief, a role he embraces with the self-awareness of an actor who doesn't go for awards but free vacation in Hawaii.
Hawaii stands for French Polynesia here and -as one viewer might expect- it is full of female natives offering colorful garlands and radiant smiles to the modern "Bounty-mutineers". There's an interesting international ambiance à la "Casablanca" (minus the war): with an Asian diaspora, and as obligatory representatives of the French metropole, you have the nuns, the local priest (Marcel Dalio) and the distinguished Marquis (a delightfully hammy Cesar Romero). And finally, there are US Navy survivors in John Wayne as "Guns" Donovan and Doc Derham (Jack Warden) the only doctor in the archipelago and certainly the most dependable and respected figure of all.
Gillhooley is the last vet to join the club and the reason the film starts with him is because he guides us right to the place of action: the pub owned by Donovan where beer flows more surely than coins from the broken slot machine, and faces more likely to get hit than the jackpot. There's a strange rivalry going between "Boats" and "Guns" as both share the same birthday (... of infamy, December 7), and celebrate each one by a tradition of drag-on fistfights both actors indulge to with the same childish pleasure as kids playing cowboys (rivalries are like bar brawls, you don't know who start them, but you insist on being the one to finish them).
After these character-establishing shenanigans, we take a little detour from Boston where Amelia Derdham, a rich businesswoman, must prove that her father violated some morality clause so she can inherit his fortune and content her company's stockholders. She's played by Elizabeth Allen who's way too cold and sternly unattractive to fool us, and watching her icy façade slowly melting under the tropical sun is like the little peanuts you're being served with the beer, you know how it tastes but you can't just stop eating one after another.
So when her majestic little-self lamentably falls into the lagoon with Guns, it's one little dive for a character but a giant leap for the romance, that a straightforward director like John Ford doesn't stall. Indeed, from the very start, Mrs. Allen knows how to place her legs to let the camera literally lusting on them, so insistently it almost confines to fetishism. This is a man's movie and the male gaze is even more invasive toward the other woman played by Dorothy Lamour, the bar singer who can handle the ruder manners of Gilhooley. Elizabeth Allen goes along with the whole playful mood, plenty aware that she's playing the 'straight' role; but she proves to be more than good looks and a solid replacement to Maureen O'Hara (the one Wayne wanted for the part). Take that scene where she puts on the old swimsuit, "Guns" doesn't even realize she's pulling his leg.
And we know the Duke: he might resist good looks, but not a good sense of humor or a "mean Irish temper". Meanwhile Amelia starts to appreciate the man's warmth, believing he took children under his care, ignoring that these are her own father's children and it's a whole scheme to cover the Doc before a father-and-daughter conversation settles things for the best. The deception had noble intentions and fortunately, isn't used as the backbone of the middle act (an attempt from the Marquis to sabotage the love story fails immediately).
But there's an interesting moment where the teenaged daughter Leilani believes she was hidden from Amelia because she's half-caste indirectly making a powerful statement about tolerance and a certain hypocrisy regarding skin-color and highlighting the humanity of the two lead roles. John Wayne admitted he was too old for the part and you can tell he was more at ease in the scene where he plays with the children than the romantic man.
Among the serious vignettes, there's also a a long celebration of Christmas that works as a communion on three different cultures: Occidental, West Indies and Asian, one that a long thunderstorm can't even interrupt. The sequence is so well done it redeems a few dated stereotypes but I can tell which part are more likely to offend viewers today and while I agree that the treatment wo men receive can trigger a few sensitive minds, let's not forget this is a product of its era and that Lee Marvin is last seen staring at his new toy train like a little kid, which tells you where the emphasis should be put.
But if the veteran director is entitled to concoct a few 'potboilers', he stills knows how to serve the starters: "Boats" Gillhooley, Lee Marvin as a US navy veteran, spots Haleakaloha (a name I could only copy-paste) and after punching the sailor who didn't want to call there as promised, he jumps from the freighter and swims to the island. His dive splashes the last doubts one misinformed viewer would still have: this is the lighthearted Ford. The 'splash' also says something about the magnetic power of the island as there must be some history buried in these golden sands. The only reservation is that it misleads the viewer on the role Marvin will occupy in the film: if anything, he's the closest to a comic relief, a role he embraces with the self-awareness of an actor who doesn't go for awards but free vacation in Hawaii.
Hawaii stands for French Polynesia here and -as one viewer might expect- it is full of female natives offering colorful garlands and radiant smiles to the modern "Bounty-mutineers". There's an interesting international ambiance à la "Casablanca" (minus the war): with an Asian diaspora, and as obligatory representatives of the French metropole, you have the nuns, the local priest (Marcel Dalio) and the distinguished Marquis (a delightfully hammy Cesar Romero). And finally, there are US Navy survivors in John Wayne as "Guns" Donovan and Doc Derham (Jack Warden) the only doctor in the archipelago and certainly the most dependable and respected figure of all.
Gillhooley is the last vet to join the club and the reason the film starts with him is because he guides us right to the place of action: the pub owned by Donovan where beer flows more surely than coins from the broken slot machine, and faces more likely to get hit than the jackpot. There's a strange rivalry going between "Boats" and "Guns" as both share the same birthday (... of infamy, December 7), and celebrate each one by a tradition of drag-on fistfights both actors indulge to with the same childish pleasure as kids playing cowboys (rivalries are like bar brawls, you don't know who start them, but you insist on being the one to finish them).
After these character-establishing shenanigans, we take a little detour from Boston where Amelia Derdham, a rich businesswoman, must prove that her father violated some morality clause so she can inherit his fortune and content her company's stockholders. She's played by Elizabeth Allen who's way too cold and sternly unattractive to fool us, and watching her icy façade slowly melting under the tropical sun is like the little peanuts you're being served with the beer, you know how it tastes but you can't just stop eating one after another.
So when her majestic little-self lamentably falls into the lagoon with Guns, it's one little dive for a character but a giant leap for the romance, that a straightforward director like John Ford doesn't stall. Indeed, from the very start, Mrs. Allen knows how to place her legs to let the camera literally lusting on them, so insistently it almost confines to fetishism. This is a man's movie and the male gaze is even more invasive toward the other woman played by Dorothy Lamour, the bar singer who can handle the ruder manners of Gilhooley. Elizabeth Allen goes along with the whole playful mood, plenty aware that she's playing the 'straight' role; but she proves to be more than good looks and a solid replacement to Maureen O'Hara (the one Wayne wanted for the part). Take that scene where she puts on the old swimsuit, "Guns" doesn't even realize she's pulling his leg.
And we know the Duke: he might resist good looks, but not a good sense of humor or a "mean Irish temper". Meanwhile Amelia starts to appreciate the man's warmth, believing he took children under his care, ignoring that these are her own father's children and it's a whole scheme to cover the Doc before a father-and-daughter conversation settles things for the best. The deception had noble intentions and fortunately, isn't used as the backbone of the middle act (an attempt from the Marquis to sabotage the love story fails immediately).
But there's an interesting moment where the teenaged daughter Leilani believes she was hidden from Amelia because she's half-caste indirectly making a powerful statement about tolerance and a certain hypocrisy regarding skin-color and highlighting the humanity of the two lead roles. John Wayne admitted he was too old for the part and you can tell he was more at ease in the scene where he plays with the children than the romantic man.
Among the serious vignettes, there's also a a long celebration of Christmas that works as a communion on three different cultures: Occidental, West Indies and Asian, one that a long thunderstorm can't even interrupt. The sequence is so well done it redeems a few dated stereotypes but I can tell which part are more likely to offend viewers today and while I agree that the treatment wo men receive can trigger a few sensitive minds, let's not forget this is a product of its era and that Lee Marvin is last seen staring at his new toy train like a little kid, which tells you where the emphasis should be put.