South Pacific (1958)

 South Pacific (1958)

Starting with widescreen, Technicolor photography of the Pacific and with breezy Rodgers and Hammerstein music, (some of it familiar outside of the Musical for its use in shampoo commercials or comedic spoofs,) and kooky, funny characters it won’t be immediately obvious where the story is ultimately headed.

At the time of production, many returning WWII soldiers must have already come home with foreign brides, but I’m sure even more must have had come from the then, still recent, Korean War, and quite a few more would come from not-quite-there-yet Viet Nam; so, despite being a bit too late, it was still relevant to address domestic, American racism traveling abroad and encountering people physically different from what it had seen in its limited socio-geographical provincial setting.

The film walks a fine line between featuring near-magical exoticism (Bali Ha’i) and some rather extreme Pacific Islander primitive stereotypes, (not that they might not even apply to isolated regions even up to recent times, but the sequences still feel as if from another, faraway, distant era,) and sensitive portrayal of individuals of exotic origin, but its intentions are ultimately good in this story of young officer sent on a mission to spy on a Japanese occupied island near an American military base. To do this he must obtain the cooperation of a local French expatriate who’s dropped out of Western society.

Obviously there’s the exciting military mission as sugar-coating, but the film’s medicine/social conscience is in the stories of the nurse who falls in love with the Frenchman not realizing he is the widower of a native Tonkan and that he has two mixed-breed children; and the story of the young officer who falls in love with a native girl which might be good and fine for a brief fling, but he certainly would not want to marry her, would he?

While it's OK to fight and kill funny-looking foreigners, it's not OK to fall in love and breed with them! Or is it?

Most of the film shot in exterior sets, and there are odd creative choices such as the use of heavy color filters (to differentiate scenes from one another,) and Vaseline’d lenses to focus viewer attention on the center of the screen without resorting to closeups which would naturally sacrifice the Pacific land and seascapes, in addition to which, the production utilizes some fantastic looking matte-work.

Another surprising, socially conscious and progressive selection from the Fox Studio DVD collection.

With Rossano Brazzi, Mitzi Gaynor, John Kerr, France Nuyen, Ray Walston, and Juanita Hall.