This is a fine silent film done in the tradition of Robert Flaherty's docu's but with a scenario/script. Monte Blue in his finest silent performance is a doctor who has become disenchanted with his existence & has taken to the bottle. He meets Sebastian, a modern day opportunist cum pirate. He and Monte clash and later Monte is shanghaied by some of Sebastian's thugs and tied to the wheel of a schooner which in the title cards is infested with bubonic plagued dead bodies. The schooner is set adrift in a storm and Monte gets loose from the wheel and tries steering the boat to safety only to end up on some rocks on an uncharted tropical Pacific island. Monte later after the shipwreck meets some native islanders who have been insulated from the outside world-civilisation. They adopt Monte as one of their own and he learns to live with them and has a renewed interest in life. As time goes on Monte(his character is called Lloyd)& the natives become as family. One day Monte goes pearl diving and realizes the value of such an abundance of pearls. Greed overtakes Monte causing him to throw his newfound existence with the natives as well as their trust in the garbage can. He sets out a signal fire atop a hill to be rescued. The only boat to see his signal is Sebastian & his men. They arrive in all of their colonial like arrogance and get the native women to smoke cigarettes & the men to be lazy. Later Monte & Sebastian meet a final time before one of Sebastian's men shoots Monte dead.
This is a fine film to introduce a novice to silent films. It's what these films were all about. Fine story telling without any recorded dialogue. Beautiful travelogue like photography(in Tahiti by the way). A 10 out of 10 from me.
This is a fine film to introduce a novice to silent films. It's what these films were all about. Fine story telling without any recorded dialogue. Beautiful travelogue like photography(in Tahiti by the way). A 10 out of 10 from me.