His Majesty O’Keefe (1954)

A 19th century American (Burt Lancaster) abandoned by mutineers in a Pacific Island must crack the code that will allow him to monopolize the copra (coconut meat) trade where no one else has been able to.

It’s not so much that the film is racist, though based on the time it was produced some will inevitably see problematic elements, as it is that an American is presented as subject to Manifest Destiny in ways no one else is.

A German guy, for example, as a White man living among the natives fails in the endeavor; but also do all the other (non-Americans) traders wishing to make a copra trading deal with the islanders.

Give Americans high-grade explosives and no other culture can beat them to the punch.

There are valid reasons for the natives not to want to join civilized Whites, but these are necessarily seen (from our end) as primitive and superstition-based, the only material object they value is a difficult to obtain holy stone; but when the process is immensely facilitated, they are canny enough to understand that the stone's value is now decreased, (the movie being based on real world History, their grasp of supply and demand in hindsight is 20/20.)

But for example, O’Keefe at no point sees individual natives as racially inferior to him: He nearly romances one of them; he admires their chief (“Now, there’s a MAN!”) a sentiment which is returned, as the native chief also comes to admire O’Keefe; and he has no problem pragmatically partnering with a Chinese dentist and taking his nephew as his trusted right-hand man.

Other than his German-gone-native buddy, everyone he relates is is non-White.

The islanders disdain the cheap trinkets offered in trade (a mirror), but also the even more valuable European objects of trade (an expensive music box, or a cuckoo clock.)

But just as the islanders stepped on what the Europeans thought were valuable objects, O'Keefe himself threatens to break one of their holy stones, (turnabout might be fair play, but in this case, as shocking as it might be, it's revealed simply as a bluff.)

Living in an island paradise, the natives have no use for European culture and values. The spiritual value of their own mystical stones is a different issue.

In 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954) when Professor Aronnax and Conseil examine a rare shell, one of the natives shatters it with a well-aimed stone from a sling.

Outraged, Conseil grabs the Professor's rifle and shoots at the native, breaking a bracelet on the man's arm firmly establishing them as villains in Nemo's eyes for valuing a biological specimen more than human life.

While O'Keefe himself might seem a lot more enlightened than the two protagonists in The Man Who Would Be King (1975), his greed for copra (indirectly) still causes the death of a few dozen islanders despite the fact that the eventual wannabe slavers are meant to be the true villains of the story.

Conseil is at least demonized (by the author) for valuing science over the lives of fellow human beings (to be fair, he also actively shoots at the islander); while O'Keefe's sin is that simply doesn't worry about endangering the lives of islander friends over copra (representing material wealth,) even when he doesn't actually personally kill them.

O'Keefe is also allowed some redemption in the rescue raid.

This may be careful script writing, but it doesn't fool me.

With Joan Rice, André Morell, Abraham Sofaer, Archie Savage, and Benson Fong.