Bird of Paradise
Directed by King Vidor
Written by Wells Root, Wanda Tuchock and Leonard Praskins from a play by Richard Walton Tulley
1932/US
RKO Radio Pictures
IMDb page
First viewing/Amazon Prime rental
Johnny Baker: Aw, you haven’t sinned. I loved you and you loved me. That’s all there is to it.
Luana: But, I taboo for white man, Johnny.
They say the play was more ridiculous than the movie but I suspect it was a close call.
Johnny Baker (Joel McCrea) is on a yacht trip in the South Seas when he is dragged from the boat by a shark. Native beauty Luana (Delores Del Rio) cuts the rope that has entangled McCrea with the fish. The two are instantly smitten. The yacht crew is invited to Del Rio’s island for a welcome banquet. When McCrea attempts to carry her off for some nookie he learns that she is taboo, is to marry the prince of the island, and is also set to be a sacrifice to the god Pele if the island’s volcano erupts. The yacht crew leaves McCrea behind. Before long the two are lovers and flee to another island. Can they escape the long arm of Dolores’s father?
For me this veers into the so bad it’s good category. I never thought I’d say that about a film directed by Vidor. But seriously some of the dialogue is such high camp that I laughed out loud. The main attraction for me is that McCrea spends much of the movie without his shirt on. It didn’t help that the version I watched on Amazon Prime was colorized. There are several versions currently available on YouTube for free.
