THE TUTTLES OF TAHITI

New Zealand Listener, Volume 7, Issue 181, 11 December 1942, Page 17

THE TUTTLES OF TAHITI

(RKO: Radio)

HARLES LAUGHTON’S acting is up to standard in this film, but the film itself, isn’t quite up to the standard of Charles Laughton’s acting,

if you follow me. Clad in a battered straw hat, a stubbly beard, a dirty singlet and a dirtier pair of pants, the old maestro has a character-actor’s field day as the patriarch of a half-caste Tahitian family, but the story is as straggly and: strung-out as his countless progeny, and like. them it also seems. lacking in any purpose except to serve as a background for the antics of Papa Laughton.’ Not that one should expect much . purpose in such idle people as the Tuttles: Any energy (except for improvident enjoyment) which they may have inherited from the Massachusetts forebear who originally went .beachcombing, has long since evaporated under the’ Pacific sun, and their primary economic need ‘is for a few francs monthly* to buy enough petrol to go fishing to earn enough francs to buy petrol: to: go fishing to... etc. When the fish fail, the local doctor has a kind heart. Far more important to the Tuttles than the sordid business of working for a living is the sport of cock-fighting. When one of their more adventurous scions (Jon Hall) returns from America with nothing to show for his roaming. but the acquisition of a prize-black rooster, the Tuttles put their’ singlets on his victory over a neighbour’ Ss. bird. When the Tuttle champion ° is. ignominiously defeated, , the Tahitian sky is temporarily overcast; but. they | survive this debacle almost as light-_ heartedly as the subsequent. discovery that the family has, ‘in’ one glorious: spree, run straight through a small.fortune in prize-money acqyired when some of the Tuttle boys salvage an abandoned ship. 3 As you may gather, the’ film’s feckless philosophy won’t do much to encourage an. all-out war: effort:' at ‘least not if’ you start thinking, as I did, how pleasant. it might be to join the Tuttles.on Ta ed the Fighting French | would let you land. The Tuttles themselves would never notice the extra one; they'd accept you without question as one of the family who was somehow Tera adl eee, Re

otus-eaters nor to the regular consumers of Hollywood hash, but rather to the connoisseurs of Laughton. They should enjoy this repast almost as much as they enjoyed his offering in The Beachcomber (the flavour of his performance is almost exactly the same). But The Tuttles of Tahiti is almost a one-course meal: the side-dishes of The Beachcomber are missing.