Every time I try to watch “South Pacific,” I attempt to coax myself into believing that I will fall in love with the film before the closing credits. And after every viewing, I wind up sighing in disappointment.
What’s wrong? I always felt that “South Pacific” was a textbook example of how not to transfer a Broadway classic to the big screen – or, in this case, the very big Todd-AO screen, which cruelly magnified the source material’s flaws while also calling attention to obvious effects such as blatant matte paintings depicting the distant island Bali Ha’i.
“South Pacific” was hailed in its 1949 Broadway premiere and this 1958 film release for having a progressive attitude on race relations – specifically, interracial love between the white men and Pacific Islander women. Never mind that “Mutiny on the Bounty” got there first in 1935, with the white men actively wooing and marrying Tahitian women without suffering existential hang-ups over miscegenation and xenophobia. It also doesn’t help that the Pacific Islanders in “South Pacific” are as culturally accurate and emotionally mature as the natives running about the Three Stooges comedies that take place in South Seas settings. DVD Talk’s Glenn Erickson said it best: “The Boars’ Tooth ceremony is mostly phony ‘Ooga Booga’ stuff that went out with Frank Buck.”
Joshua Logan, who co-wrote “South Pacific” with Rodgers and Hammerstein and directed the Broadway show, took on the responsibility of directing the film. That was a big mistake. Logan was an uninspired film director who previous works – “Picnic,” “Bus Stop” and “Sayonara” – were mediocre productions that benefitted by having charismatic stars who were better than their material. In contrast, “South Pacific” was burdened by a cast that, with few exceptions, didn’t fit their roles.
Mitzi Gaynor was a vivacious musical comedy performer who shined when her character was expressing carefree joy, but she was a poor dramatic actress who failed to plumb the emotional angst carried by her character’s discover that the man she loves fathered mixed-race children. Rossano Brazzi and John Kerr, playing white men with a fondness for Pacific Island women, were not singers and their respective musical numbers were dubbed by music professionals whose booming voices bore no resemblance to the actors’ speaking voices – and both actors seemed so disinterested in their surroundings that one has to ponder if off-screen troubles clouded their on-screen work. Only Ray Walston as a scheming sailor and Juanita Hall as the indefatigable islander Bloody Mary gave fully dimensional performances – oddly, Rodgers insisted that Hall’s songs be dubbed because he felt her vocals were not up to standard, even though she originated her role on Broadway and would go on to appear in Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “Flower Drum Song” without any complaints regarding her voice.
In fairness, Logan admitted his use of garish color filters to signal emotional cues in the musical numbers were a mistake – albeit an unintentionally funny mistake that happily distracts from the static segments. But even without the filters, the musical numbers are staged in dull theatrical manner – they feel like an expensive home movie with the subjects either standing nearly motionless or just walking back and forth while the camera follows them with the slightest of panning movements. Only the “Honey Bun” sequence, with Gaynor at her perkiest and Walston in bad drag, has any significant energy – even though the camera is often too far back from the actors to properly capture their antics.
But, hey, what do I know? “South Pacific” was the top grossing film of 1958 – at the Dominion Theatre in London, it ran for nearly four-and-a-half years. Mercifully for this film’s backers, opinions like mine were in the tiniest of minorities.