We're in the middle of hurricane season here in the western hempisphere part of the Atlantic, and with that in mind I watched the copy of the 1937 movie The Hurricane that I've had on my DVR for several months, not to be confused with other movies with the same title.
The movie starts off with an establishing sequence of a boat sailing through the South Seas, with a Dr. Kersaint (Thomas Mitchell) among the passengers. The boat passes a deserted island, and Dr. Kersaint starts talking about the island to a female passenger. Kersaint had spent time in these islands, and he has bittersweet memories of them. As you might guess, this leads to a flashback....
The island in question, Manakoora, is part of an archipelago administered by France, who have sent a governor in the form of Eugene De Laage (Raymond Massey). This being the era before airplanes, and most of the islands not having suitable space for runways anyway, the islands are served by sailing ships that go from one island to another. Many of the ships use native Polynesins for the crews, since they have local knowledge of the seas and are accomplished seafarers, having gotten to all of these islands after all.
Among the sailors is Terangi (John Hall). The current voyage brings him back to the main island, where his fiancée Marama (Dorothy Lamour) is waiting for him. Also waiting with romantic interest for a passenger is the Governor, whose wife Germaine (Mary Astor) is on the boat. Also getting off the boat, at least with the movie making a point of showing him so we'll know it's an important cast member, is a new Catholic priest to serve the island, Fr. Paul (C. Aubrey Smith). Now that Terangi is returned to his home island, he can marry Marama and they can live happily ever after.
Well, not quite, since all of this has happened in the first 20 minutes or so. Terangi and Merama are in love, and Merama doesn't want Terangi to leave her. But his job is to go sailing, and he has to leave her, as there's no space for the wives of the sailors. This disappoints Marama, since the next voyage is taking the boat to Tahiti, the big island in the area.
But things go wrong on Tahiti, as a nasty European starts treating the Polynesian sailors like crap, even smacking Terangi. Terangi hits back in self-defense, but he breaks the other guy's jaw and this other guy has connections, which gets Terangi sent to prison for six months. Terangi is like Jean Valjean, having been oversentenced for a minor crime and wanting to escape. He keeps trying, again and again, to escape, which lengthens the sentence. But eventually he does escape, almost in time for the titular hurricane....
If there's a problem with The Hurricane, it's that it goes on too long between the time Terangi gets sentenced and the time the storm comes, with there not really being enough plot development in between. Audiences of 1937 would have wanted to see the storm, however, and that's something that's definitely worth waiting for, as the special effects are quite good for 1937. It's just a shame that the effects aren't in service of a better story.
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