PACIFIC DESTINY
(Lawrie Productions-British Lion) ‘[ HIS, in spite of its trumpet-blast of a title, is a quite unpretentious, rather loose-jointed, and thoroughly charming production which I might have missed altogether had it not arrived in a week when Wellington was suffering a glut of extended screenings and return seasons. New films being scarce as old potatoes, I paid my money and I took my choice and regretted neither. Pacific Destiny -the title was the only thing about it that jarred-is an abbreviated film version of A Pattern of Islands, Sir Arthur Grimble’s account of his early days as a junior officer in the Colonial ‘Service, and I confess that I couldn’t for the life of me see how a producer was going to catch the elusive charm of the book, or an actor the equally particular charm of Grimble. The first difficulty was overcome in a way as simple as it was effective. Except for one or two brief introductory sequences, shot in England, the film was made in the South Pacific. True, the producer (James Lawrie) didn’t go quite all the way with his reconstruction. Samoa and the Samoans had to stand in for the Gilbert and Ellice group which were, I suppose, uneconomically far-flung from the film-maker’s point of view. I’ve no doubt, anyway (though I haven’t the anthropological know-how to back the statement) that whichever the archipelago, Polynesians are much the same in their cheerfulness, friendliness, good-humour, and what the Americans would call their folkways. I found the’ pattern of life in the islands as seductive on the screen as Grimble made it in his book-and I mean seductive without any Fitzpatrickery, the seduction of a life in which values are on the whole simple and solid, and community life a warm and comfortable thing rather than an obstacle race. Nor was there any fictitious glamourising of the islanders themselves. The young had grace enough, but it was the solid architectural grace that Gauguin revealed, not the ersatz glamour of the airport | hula girls; and the old had dignity. There were, of course, one or two bad hats-as in the book-ominous old men with antique grudges, muttering spells, dealing in magic and poisoned toddy. But their ill-wishing was, significantly, overcome not by force but by moral suasion-and laughter. The film, possibly because it recorded a people and their environment without pretentiousness, quite captivated me. It was a whole world away from the artificialities of The Seekers, and at times even re- . minded me of old man Flaherty’s incomparable Moana. As the young Arthur Grimble, Denholm Elliott managed pretty well to convey the blend of eagerness, gaucherie, and good humour that the earlier chapters of the book suggest, and Inia Te Wiata has a substamtial part as a native magistrate (a composite of one "oer two characters in the book), which he plays with grace and dignity. The photography and the Eastman Colour are both fine, and if the story is somewhat episodic it has its passages of brisk comedy and its occasional excitements, of which the duel with the tigershark (marred only by a few frames of | obvious faking) is the best. Pacific Destiny (director, Wolf Rilla) was, in fact,
an unexpected pleasure. If it sends some filmgoers back to the book it will have been doubly worthwhile.
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 35, Issue 898, 19 October 1956, Page 19
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551PACIFIC DESTINY New Zealand Listener, Volume 35, Issue 898, 19 October 1956, Page 19
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