Somehow I'd never seen this very large, very successful adaptation of a James A. Michener novel detailing the cruel post-World War II military policy of discouraging intermarriage between American soldiers and, as Paul Osborn's screenplay has it, "indigenants," meaning Japanese women. It's lavishly shot in Technicolor and Technirama, doting on beautiful Japanese locations, and as a plea for tolerance, it must have had considerable bite in 1957. Marlon Brando, affecting a strange, intriguing Southern accent (he even had a dialogue coach), is the major who's happy enough to be engaged to Patricia Owens until he meets Miiko Taka and finds his well-curated prejudices against the former enemy evaporating. He counsels buddy Red Buttons against marrying Miyoshi Umeki but is quickly won over to their side-as in a Rodgers and Hammerstein show, including "South Pacific" (also derived from Michener), there has to be a tragic second couple to allow the primary one its happy ending. Buttons and Umeki both won Oscars; he's excellent, showing a serious side we never knew he had, while she's, well, rather passive-it's a delicate performance, but she hasn't that much to do. There's also Ricardo Montalban, of all people, as a Japanese kabuki master, and a young James Garner for Brando to play off of. Director Joshua Logan revels in the pageantry, and, this being a Josh Logan movie, if there's an excuse for a hunky man to take his shirt off, he does. Martha Scott and Kent Smith, somewhat on the sidelines as Owens' parents, do good jobs, and if the whole thing's a bit bloated at two and a half hours, in the end it's affecting. Dated by current standards, of course, but fairly honest, socially conscious Big Hollywood for its time.
