South Pacific (1958)

At a Polynesian island where an American World War II outpost is seated, several stories unfold. A newly arrived lieutenant falls in love with a native; a nurse falls in love with an older French man who has made the island his home; a secret mission on a neighboring island which is controlled by the Japanese is to be launched.

This is an awful film, and not just because of the botched "color filters" effects. The story is terribly uninteresting, and the songs are just passable. One particular change in regards to the source novel makes the story nearly incomprehensible. In the novel, the nurse feels revulsion towards the idea of becoming the stepmother of some dark-skinned children, but is OK with the lighter-skinned Asian children from another woman. In the film, there are no dark-skinned children, and she is OK with the Asian ones, but has a problem with her prospective husband's late wife, because she was Asian. This notion of retrospective racism towards a dead person is much harder to fathom, if you want my opinion. The film is a manifesto for miscegenation, and the ideological pièce-de-resistance is the song You've Got to Be Carefully Taught. The purported moral lesson seems to be that, since racism is, allegedly, not inborn, but learned, it is not a good thing. Regardless of what one should think, or not, about racism, the argument seems odd, especially in a war movie. After all, fighting a war in a place thousands of miles from home, because of an aggression which took place in Hawaii, does not seem to be the kind of behavior that springs naturally from instinct. Anyway, it is alway nice to be preached at, and Hollywood is just the preacher we all need.

Rating: 21