Ken G Hall once said this was his favourite of all his movies - although I'm sure On Our Selection must have been a sentimental favourite - because it was set in the tropics. I wonder what sort of movies Hall would have made had he been able to film whatever he wanted - Robbery Under Arms of course, but he didn't mention many others in his memoirs... he probably didn't think it was appropriate to even think of something super personal.
But I also get the feeling he liked this one because it was a very Hollywood-like story, and Hall admired Hollywood so much. Many of his other Cinesound movies could only have been made in Australia - this feels like it could have been shot by Universal with Maria Montez and Jon Hall. (The Broken Melody and Tall Timbers are two other of his films like that.)
Not that it doesn't feel Australian, just less "could only be Australian". It's set in Thursday Island, with the benefit of some superb location second unit. The back projection and incorporation between studio and location footage isn't always the best - sometimes it really jars - but I did enjoy the movie's ambition.
The version I watched was the US one which only ran at 65 minutes - half an hour less than the proper Australian version. The editing job was poor, too, particularly in the early scenes which feel choppy - and Campbell Copelin's part of silly ass Archie seems very truncated.
Still, you can't blame this for the dodgy story. Lloyd Hughes is a top level musician who is bored with life so he accepts a challenge from Elaine Hamill to retrieve a pearl from an exotic corner of the globe. It's such a silly idea that it took a while for the film to work with me, not helped by the American edit hatchet job.
But once Hughes arrived on Thursday Island things got better and I really liked the sense of community and friendship on the island: shonky boat captain Sidney Wheeler, mysterious James Raglan, spirited Shirley Ann Richards who likes to walk around the island in men's clothes, drunken Alec Kellaway (the first of many excellent character turns for Hall). All these people help each other out and get along - so it has heart (which popped up in Dad and Dave Come to Town.) The underwater photography wasn't bad either.
Hughes isn't a particularly likeable or inspiring lead, Frank Harvey's dialogue is particularly over-flowery heere, there is some racism common to movies of the time - the villain is called Mendoza, and he works for a person called Kishimuni - and it is creaky in places. But it's an entertaining film and one of Hall's best movies.
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