Having visited Hawaii once I've maintained that it's such a beautiful place it's impossible not to make a beautiful looking film on location there. This remake of Bird Of Paradise has both color cinematography and great Hawaiian locations.
When I reviewed the 1932 version of Bird Of Paradise with Joel McCrea and Dolores DelRio I said it was dated but entertaining. Well it's now even more dated and less entertaining. The story originally started as a Broadway play by Richard Walton Tully and starred the legendary Laurette Taylor and the one thing that Taylor, DelRio, and Debra Paget in this film have in common is the fiery death by volcano that all these women. Otherwise we have three separate plots.
Here Jeff Chandler, native prince of the island is returning to the South Seas accompanied here by Louis Jourdan who is there for a visit, the two of them having gone to school together. Chandler has a sister in Debra Paget and she and Jourdan get to kanoodling hot and heavy.
But it seems that fate is against these two having a life together as all the signs of their animist tradition are against them. In the end that's what defeats them.
As in the 1932 version there is a healthy respect for those native traditions shown in this, less unusual than for the time of the first film. But I have to say it all makes less sense now.
I doubt we'll see another version of this story made.
When I reviewed the 1932 version of Bird Of Paradise with Joel McCrea and Dolores DelRio I said it was dated but entertaining. Well it's now even more dated and less entertaining. The story originally started as a Broadway play by Richard Walton Tully and starred the legendary Laurette Taylor and the one thing that Taylor, DelRio, and Debra Paget in this film have in common is the fiery death by volcano that all these women. Otherwise we have three separate plots.
Here Jeff Chandler, native prince of the island is returning to the South Seas accompanied here by Louis Jourdan who is there for a visit, the two of them having gone to school together. Chandler has a sister in Debra Paget and she and Jourdan get to kanoodling hot and heavy.
But it seems that fate is against these two having a life together as all the signs of their animist tradition are against them. In the end that's what defeats them.
As in the 1932 version there is a healthy respect for those native traditions shown in this, less unusual than for the time of the first film. But I have to say it all makes less sense now.
I doubt we'll see another version of this story made.