This is a gorgeous film to look at, and like the previous decade's "San Francisco", is best remembered for a powerful earthquake sequence. But the soap opera storyline has got to be seen to be believed, and it all surrounds the children of former lovers Frank Morgan and Gladys Cooper, reunited years later as neighbors, he a widower with a grown son and she married (to Edmund Gwenn) with two daughters. The two girls both fall in love with the son (Richard Hart), a brooding young man who thanks to Gwenn becomes an officer in the Imperial Navy and an accidental deserter thanks apparently to some rice wine given to him by a Eurasian girl he meets while in China. Now a drunk like his father, he settles in New Zealand, and sends a letter to his love, accidentally putting in her sister's name. When she shows up ready for marriage, he feels guilty and goes through with it, causing a situation he will have to face years later when the sisters are reunited.
This is almost a "Gone With the Wind" of the south of the equator as two completely different women, one willful (Lana Turner), the other sweet (Donna Reed, seeming very much like Olivia de Havilland) love the same man and go through tons of heartache. Reed is ready to do what her mother once almost did, jump off a cliff, but the Mother Superior (Dame May Witty) who once prevented Cooper from doing the same thing steps in once again, giving Reed a book that will change her life. In New Zealand, a pregnant Turner goes through one of the wildest on-screen earthquakes, later deals with her husband's partner (Van Heflin) who obviously loves her, and stands tall through a rebellion by native New Zealanders who are not about to be ruled by the British.
Everybody does their best to help this film rise above it silly over-the-top story, which will keep your attention because of its delightful attention to detail. The earthquake itself is one of the boldest sequences ever in film, and the flood that follows devastating, especially considering recent events with tidal waves and tsunamis which have caused world devastation. Still, there is a feeling of too much of a good thing as it strives too hard to cover too much territory, pretty much a retread of "The Rains Came" which ironically was remade by Turner as "The Rains of Ranchipur".
This is almost a "Gone With the Wind" of the south of the equator as two completely different women, one willful (Lana Turner), the other sweet (Donna Reed, seeming very much like Olivia de Havilland) love the same man and go through tons of heartache. Reed is ready to do what her mother once almost did, jump off a cliff, but the Mother Superior (Dame May Witty) who once prevented Cooper from doing the same thing steps in once again, giving Reed a book that will change her life. In New Zealand, a pregnant Turner goes through one of the wildest on-screen earthquakes, later deals with her husband's partner (Van Heflin) who obviously loves her, and stands tall through a rebellion by native New Zealanders who are not about to be ruled by the British.
Everybody does their best to help this film rise above it silly over-the-top story, which will keep your attention because of its delightful attention to detail. The earthquake itself is one of the boldest sequences ever in film, and the flood that follows devastating, especially considering recent events with tidal waves and tsunamis which have caused world devastation. Still, there is a feeling of too much of a good thing as it strives too hard to cover too much territory, pretty much a retread of "The Rains Came" which ironically was remade by Turner as "The Rains of Ranchipur".