THE HURRICANE B
USA (110 mi)
1937
uncredited co-director (listed as associate director): Stuart Heisler
The South Sea islands,
the last hiding place of beauty and adventure.
—Girl on ship (Inez Courtney)
No jail can hold
Terangi very long — if it has a window in it, he’ll fly away! If it has water
around it, he’ll swim away! —
Marama (Dorothy Lamour)
I represent a
civilization that cannot afford to show confusion or conflict to the people it
governs. — French Governor Eugene De
Laage (Raymond Massey)
How can I be your
judge? You’ve sinned, but others have sinned more against you. You weren’t
meant for evil, you were made to do evil.
—Father Paul (C. Aubrey Smith)
Other than the most recent Tabu (2012),
another filmmaker influenced by F.W. Murnau’s TABU (1931) is none other than
American movie icon John Ford who traveled to the South Pacific to make this
film, specifically the village of Pago Pago on Tutuila Island in American
Samoa, while also constructing an artificial native village on 2 ½ acres on the
United Artist back lots where according to Life
Magazine, special effects wizard James Basevi was given a budget of
$400,000 to create his effects, spending $150,000 to build a native village
with a lagoon 200 yards long, and another $250,000 destroying it.
Pre-dating the tornado sequence in THE WIZARD OF OZ (1939) and the modern era
Weather Channel on TV, no one had ever seen such a vivid recreation of a tropical
storm, more correctly called a cyclone in the South Pacific (hurricanes are
in the Atlantic), where the real thrill is an incredible 15-minute hurricane
sequence that was actually directed by Stuart Heisler, perhaps best known for
his film noir remake of The
Glass Key (1942) starring Veronica Lake and Alan Ladd, but also the rarely
seen early performance from Susan Hayward in Among the
Living (1941). Ford usually liked to personally supervise all of the
filming on his movies, so Heisler’s ability to simulate a savagely fierce
island hurricane is particularly noteworthy, as it’s one of the best uses of
special effects in early cinema. Adapted from the Charles Nordhoff and
James Norman Hall novel, the same duo writing The Mutiny on the Bounty, an Academy Award winning film in 1935,
the film is a highly picturesque South Seas island melodrama that borrows
liberally from TABU, especially the contrasting views of “Paradise” and
“Paradise Lost,” as seen through two marriages, young Polynesian newlyweds
Terangi (Jon Hall, an American actor who was actually raised in nearby Tahiti)
and Marama (Dorothy Lamour, a former Miss New Orleans who became associated
with roles in sarongs) and the more “civilized” European couple of French
Governor Eugene De Laage, the ever dour Raymond Massey wearing a white suit
with matching pith helmet, and his wife Germaine, Mary Astor.
Set during the colonial era in the South Pacific on the French
Polynesian island of Manakoora, with the sweeping musical theme of “Moon of
Manakoora”
Alfred
Newman - The Moon Of Manakoora - YouTube (3:08) playing throughout the
movie, the lushly visualized island village has a sandy shoreline with swaying
palm trees where the glimmering seas never looking so romantic, a picture of
innocence and hope. Yet according to Turner Classic Movie’s Robert
Osborne, the story resembles Les
Misérables “with a relentlessly sadistic villain in constant pursuit of an
unfairly hounded victim.” The same could be said about an earlier Ford
movie shot the previous year, THE PRISONER OF SHARK ISLAND (1936), which
features another unjustly accused man attempting to escape from prison, where
interestingly John Carradine plays the sadistic warden in each film. Told
entirely in flashback, the film is given a near mythical characterization,
where the islanders are seen from an outsiders point of view as childishly
naïve and overly happy, mostly without a care in the world, yet a cultural
divide seems to have been bridged in several examples of perfect harmony, where
Terangi is seen as an indispensable first mate on a European vessel traveling
back and forth to Tahiti, and in a gorgeously exotic marriage ceremony between
Terangi and Marama, where literally hundreds wore gardenia leis around their
necks and every woman had flowers in her hair, as they are given the blessing
of both the Catholic Church and the tribal chief. However, viewers may
cringe when they hear Terangi proudly announce to his new bride, “In Tahiti,
when I sit down in a café with this cap on, I’m just the same as a white
man.” Overall, the natives are seen as docile and obedient to authority,
where they submit to the rule of an intractable and extremely narrow minded
Governor who sees the law in absolute terms. It’s unclear why such a
small island would even have a French Governor and why people would so easily
submit to his authority, especially without any police or militia at his
disposal. Early on we see the tribal chief cooperating with the jailing
of a native for theft, when the evidence suggests he was using a canoe to
romance his girlfriend under the moonlight. One wonders how this is
considered a crime, especially since all the canoes are owned by native
islanders and none were pressing charges. Most likely the idea of
property ownership is strictly a European principle, so a distinction is
clearly made between the tyrannical colonizers who make the rules and the
submissive natives who must adhere to them, especially when the law is unjustly
applied.
Ford builds a strong case for resistance to imperialist
tyranny, as the moral divide only grows larger and more untenable when Terangi
is arrested in Tahiti for slugging a drunken white man making racial slurs,
where the offended party is politically connected in France, leading to a
6-month prison sentence for what might be considered justifiable assault.
Assigned to back-breaking labor and treated with all manor of abuse by
Carradine, Terangi makes multiple escape attempts, seen diving off cliffs into
the ocean, only to have more time added to his sentence each time, eventually
totalling 16 years. Ford insisted the violent whippings actor Jon Hall endure
be real, wanting no fake acting, but unfortunately the realism was so severe
the censors forced the scenes be cut due to their brutality. Despite the
disparity of an excessive sentence for the original crime, the Governor refuses
to intervene, making no exceptions, going strictly by the book, despite the
pleas of his wife and a sympathetic island doctor, Dr. Kersaint, Thomas
Mitchell, seen as a philosophizing lush, a world-weary man who’s been away from
civilization for too long, something of a preliminary run-through of his
Academy Award winning performance for pretty much the exact same character in
Ford’s STAGECOACH (1939). When Terangi does manage to cleverly escape,
making a heroic journey in only a canoe, he is sheltered by the village priest
and the natives, who are seen celebrating his escape, which only enrages the
Governor, even more maniacally insistent on tracking him down and bringing him
to justice. Nature’s response to man’s feeble attempts at implementing
justice is harshly judgmental, showing a force of Biblical proportions, where
the entire island comes under siege. The ferocious devastation is
brilliantly realized with a massive hurricane sequence that must have been
indescribably intense when initially seen in the theaters, as no one had ever
seen anything like it. To the sound of crashing waves and gushing winds,
Ford used the most powerful propeller-driven wind machines ever designed
generating winds up to 150 miles per hour and 150,000 gallons of water to
lambaste his actors, where no stunt doubles were used. The force of the
wind is astonishing, probably Ford’s best special effects sequence throughout
his entire career, where cinema’s promise to create awe and spectacle is
actually delivered. The sequence literally overwhelms the rest of the
picture, making everything else seem like an afterthought, but the contrast
between the idyllic peaceful tranquility on the island and the monstrous roar
of the waves remains utterly spectacular.
