Bird of Paradise (1932)

 

Director: King Vidor

Screenplay: Wells Root, Wanda Tuchock and Leonard Praskins

Based on a stage play by Richard Walton Tully

Cast: Dolores del Río as Luana; Joel McCrea as Johnny Baker; John Halliday as Mac; Richard "Skeets" Gallagher as Chester; Bert Roach as Hector; Lon Chaney Jr. as Thornton; Wade Boteler as Skipper Johnson; Reginald Simpson as O'Fallon

Ephemeral Waves

 

"What do they call this place?"

"Probably one of the Virgin Islands"

"Heaven forbid."

Immediately from the gate, pointing out that Bird of Paradise is offensive and politically incorrect - as a pre-Hollywood Code film where natives of a Pacific island are defamed superstitious and exotic, sacrificing maidens to volcanoes, compared to the white male protagonist - is obvious, but a waste of a review if that was the only thing to spend a review writing about. That should be something we should be already be aware of, and to have to repeat that as the basis of a review is in itself a sad state of affairs. Context should already support a viewer in realising this is from a different era be it the attitudes spoken of in terms of the "native" characters we see portrayed and that, with establishing shots taken in Hawaii, the lead female lead despite being a maiden from the Pacific Ocean islands is being played by an actress not from the region, Mexican actress Dolores del Río.

What Bird of Paradise is now is a cultural artefact, one which for many would be difficult to appreciate, or have to clench through its problems, but I came into with fascination as a text alien to the modern day. It is of the old Hollywood of pure fantasy, a construct depicting a Pacific island of the mind, the kind of haze dream which, camp nowadays, would have fed the brains of the likes of avant-garde filmmaker Jack Smith, and perverted with overt phallic plants by Bertrand Mandico for The Wild Boys (2017). Its racism, and the complex web it ends up in for a tale of a white sailor Johnny Baker (Joel McCrea) falling in love with del Rio's native girl Luana, is a reminder that even a decade is a time ago, so the early ninety thirties is itself a time before with a lot of attitudes that have to be tackled head on. The film states it is set in the early thirties in dialogue, but you could swear it was turn of the century, the islanders the stereotype of the naive exotic "others", the white sailors teasing them with ice in the water which confuses them, and offering items from the first world like smoking pipes as trinkets as one would to children. It would be easy to just bury a film like this, probably not the worst film likely to exist from this era in terms of depictions, but that would be an unwillingness to look at ourselves and see our bias.

It also has a farcical edge, surrounding a notion in the plot of virgins being sacrificed to volcanoes. The entire volcano sacrifice concept is one that led me to wonder mid-viewing, as the film will eventually hinge around Luana, the tribal chief daughter, being there to sacrifice to appease the volcano God, whether it is something which is actually happened in one obscure tribe or likely a pure construct of colonially bias pulp. Canadian filmmaker Guy Maddin pastiched in The Forbidden Room (2015) among countless influences, which is where this idea only exists for me, and this is likely one of the first (if any) sources for this fancy as a plot device then anything remotely practical as a practice.  

Again, I find myself with idea that merely saying that this film is merely offensive and not to watch is a worthless act to do for a review, even if I have to return to this over and over. I would hope you, the reader, if you are to feel uncomfortable with the content I will warn you about would just avoid the film - of white leads looking down on the natives, with some of the extras cast for authenticity, a romance with a native girl that eroticises her and shows her as a simple figure among figures backwards in their violent superstitions. If you were to still watch the film, my imagined reader, and be offended it would be obvious why. However, the film exists and, just from the volcano subplot, what Bird of Paradise is as content deserves to still be prodded with curiosity as much with these concerns in mind.

What Bird of Paradise definitely is camp melodrama, emphasised by the fact that even the sailors, despite Joel McCrea with his manly leading man appearance being the centre of attention, alongside beingcomedic foils are frankly flamboyant in a couple themselves. This is a film of exaggeration, not that dissimilar (but with more political issues) to the fifties tiki hut lounge music movement of exotica. With an uncredited Busby Berkeley choreographing the "native" dance sequence in the middle, this is Hollywood's extravagance in both its glory and bad taste too. It is emphasised knowing this film contextually has many importance sub currents to it in terms of American cinema's history. From RKO Studios, which would grow in stature over the thirties and forties just from King Kong in 1933, this is produced by David Selznick, in a brief period with RKO before a future including the legendary Gone with the Wind (1939) among his projects. King Vidor, a figure behind a fascinating film like The Crowd (1928), is here as is the fact that this is a sound production. Moving from the silent era Vidor worked in, to a period where actors were pushed aside when their voices now became a factor to consider, and the technology for sound having to be negotiated around practically just beforehand, Bird of Paradise from its exotic score to the dialogue stands out knowing just before sound was alien.

Then there is the fact this is a pre-Code film, a period sadly not easy to access still outside of the United States. Suffice to say, even if former post-master general Will Hays had already being brought into Hollywood at this point to clean up the cinema, there was a period in the early thirties where a lot of adult and edgy content for the time was still flagrantly around. Baring its problematic ethnographic content, Bird of Paradise is tame in the modern day, but it is still surprising for an underwater sequence where clearly, whilst blurred in the image, a female stand-in for Dolores del Río is very naked. Or that del Rio herself eventually wears above the waist only a strategically place garland which leaves nothing to the imagination. Or that, in contrast, McCrea's body is eroticised too, in a scene where coconut milk is seductively drank between them and spills on their figures whilst among of the native foliage.

It is a shame such a film is embedded to its historical context, the artificial reality of the dream factory felt fully here in its lack of subtlety or the exaggeration, where something like a shark randomly causing the natives to flee in their canoes is touched upon with a heightened shock for what is merely a fin gliding through the water and strategic use of pre-shot footage of a real one. Sadly, such an aesthetic is found, in its sincere form, in problematic material. del Rio, whose reputation includes her work back in her homeland of Mexico and the theatre for her full legacy, is frankly stuck with a character unable to grow as, with her childish grasp of English, the character of Luana is the eroticised innocent. Even Joel McCrea, who would make a career in the last half of his career mostly in westerns, is stuck with generic bland white male hero. These films appealed, and they influenced figures that could run with their best virtues even on lowest budgets into phantasmagorical content, but you are stuck with a film which has to cast a Hispanic actress, in a role which ultimately does not give her a lot to do, as an entirely different ethnicity. A film which has to dance a merry dance awkwardly around miscegenation, something Will Hays among his many do-and-don't would have as prohibited in Hollywood cinema but continues here beforehand to be uncomfortable for the ideas of the culture. [Spoilers] The volcano appears for a tragic ending but you can suspect as much of it is loaded even by accident in this mess of the time's attitudes. [Spoilers] I enjoyed this film when it was pure pulp, of whirlpools lovingly rendered in heightened style, or the extravagance of a flying fish swarm with many extras in boats and McCrea hitting them with a tennis racket, but you have to take these moments with the cultural baggage. The difference is I accept this and try to find these aspects to take of interest. That does mean rolling one's eyes a lot and having the kindness to warn others out of concern of their worst aspects.