Wow, what a picture! If only someone would digitize, remaster and possibly colorize this flick. UCLA Film Archive, are you listening? Jon Hall and Dorothy Lamour put on some great skin beauty candy for the viewers. Both had long natural hair and athletic bodies. And the special effects were before their time. The "wind" plays as a character in the movie. You would be surprised at these special effects, given it was filmed in 1937 without computers! On a different note, I wish all seven of Dorothy Lamour's sarong movies were available on DVD with tons of special features, remastered, of course! Did you know that one of Dorothy Lamour's sarongs is in exhibition at the Smithsonian Museum? I can't wait to read her "My Side of the Road" autobiography.

In the Island of Manukura, a French colony in the South Seas, the joyful Terangi (Jon Hall) is a leader among the natives and the first mate of the Katopua, the tall ship of Captain Nagle (Jerome Cowan). Terangi gets married with Marama (Dorothy Lamour) and sooner he sails to Tahiti. While in a bar playing with other natives, Terangi is offended by an alcoholic racist French and he hits his face, breaking his jaw. Despite the testimony of Captain Nagle, Terangi is sentenced to six months of forced labor since the victim had political connections with the Powers That Be. Captain Nagle asks the Governor Eugene DeLaage (Raymond Massey) to uses his influence to help Terangi, but the governor refuses. Terangi unsuccessfully tries to escape from the prison, and each attempt increases his sentence. Eight years later, he finally escapes and his jailbreak is celebrated in Manukura. Father Paul (C. Aubrey Smith) finds his canoe and brings Terangi hidden to the island. But a devastating hurricane also arrives in the island threatening the dwellers. "The Hurricane" is a tale of injustice in the South Seas that recalls Victor Hugo's Les Misérables. The saga of the sweet Terangi is very similar to the story of Jean Valjean, both characters victims of the injustice of the French criminal system in those years. The sequence of the hurricane is very impressive for a 1947 feature. I can not say that the hurricane was brought in a divine intervention since the despicable governor saves his life in the end and most of the natives die. My vote is eight.Title (Brazil): "O Furacão" ("The Hurricane")

James Basevi's special effects are very good for the period and hold up well today. During the climactic storm, director John Ford told his photographer to keep the cameras running "in case somebody's sarong blows off or something." There must have been many out-takes involving disappearing sarongs because the wind machines and water tanks were working overtime.John Hall is Terangi, happy first mate of both a cargo-carrying sailboat and of Dorothy Lamour. In fact all the natives on the island of Manakura are happy. So are the white folks who more or less run the place -- Raymond Massey as Inspector Javert, I mean Governor DeLaage, his wife Mary Astor, C. Aubrey Smith as the priest, and Thomas Mitchell as a drunken doctor, a role he must have found comfortable. On a visit to Tahiti, six hundred miles away, Terangi is insulted and slapped by a racist white man and impulsively hits back, breaking the man's jaw. This nets him six months in jail, despite the efforts of his captain, Jerome Cowan, to have him pardoned.John Hall, however, isn't used to confinement. No "native" is, explains Cowan to the governor. And he's right about that. Hall's repeated attempts to escape cost him more time until it all totals up to sixteen impossible years, before Hall finally makes a successful escape and return to Manakura and his wife and child.Governor Massey is not a cold fish. He loves his wife, enjoys the company of his friends, and wants to be liked by his subjects. But he's adamant about upholding the law. When he learns that Hall has returned to Manakura he turns the place upside down looking for him.At that point the eponymous storm strikes and destroys the island, leaving only a handful of survivors including Massey, Astor, Cowan, Mitchell, Hall, and Lamour. The latter sail off into the sunset with their daughter in a small canoe. Massey spots them but, having undergone a conversion to compassion during the hurricane, he pretends he sees nothing but a floating log.It's an interesting movie, if a very sad one, and raises questions about what might be called "slippage" in following bureaucratic rules. Can there be no exceptions at all, as Massey argues? In World War Two, one of my professors was a company commander who received orders to set up a machine gun before an expected enemy attack. The field of fire covered nothing but the face of a cliff, from which no attack could possibly come. He pointed this out to his superior officer, who replied that, yes, it was true, the map was wrong, the position was untenable in the case of an attack and everyone in the company might be killed. But that's what you have to do because it says so right here in the orders.Got a bit derailed there, for a moment, but universalism is the central issue of the movie. It's what moves the entire plot along. The increasing tension and the final resolution depend on the conflict Massey experiences between the letter of the law and its spirit.The climactic hurricane aside, I have to subtract some points for acting and make up. The acting resembles that in silent movies. John Hall is handsome and has expressive features with big bright sorrowful eyes but he overuses everything. That's partly Ford's fault. Dorothy Lamour, pretty much ditto. And, man, she can't handle a Polynesian accent. As far as that goes, one native near the beginning speaks Samoan and later some others speak Tahitian. It's a minor point because Polynesian languages are closely related. If it's "aloha" in Hawaiian, it's "talofa" in Samoan and "tarofa" in Tahitian. But among all the extras, they could apparently find only one woman to do the traditional Tahitian dance called "tamure", and no skilled men at all.Again, that's all carping. Less minor are stereotypical shots of the priest with his arms upraised to heaven while a choir sings and the walls of the church cave in and kill everyone. Ford, a sentimental and religious populist during this era, didn't waste any time on subtlety. Everyone is good, everyone is right -- except the unyielding governor. Oh, and John Carradine, who plays a sadistic guard in the prison at Tahiti. The natives are thoroughly stereotyped. They celebrate Hall's return by getting drunk, doing dirty dances, and allowing men to sling women over their shoulders and rush off into the jungle. Ha ha.The story is shot in a straightforward fashion. Unlike Terangi, we're never at sea. The fine, evocative score -- overused by today's standards -- is by Alfred Newman. And the climax is slam-bang.

I always try to catch this movie when it shows up on TV, usually TCM. Leonard Maltin calls the hurricane scenes unequaled and he's right. Quite impressive even by today's standards.Well, I guess I need to continue with this review. I didn't meet the quota on lines.I would agree with the assessment above that Lamour and John Hall are in their prime physically. Impressive that they got top billing despite the appearance of Raymond Massey, Mary Astor, Carradine, and Thomas Mitchell. Of course, John Ford, the director went on to even more successful action movies, and won numerous awards. As many know, he teamed with John Wayne for a number of award winning westerns.