Cinema: The New Pictures Aug. 13, 1928

White Shadows of the South Seas.

Equipped with Frederick O’Brien’s book bearing this name, a Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer squad sailed for Tahiti in the South Sea Islands to make a picture. In the squad were that frazzled lover, Monte Blue, and a 20-year-old Mexican girl named Raquel Torres. At Tahiti, the squad got natives to fill out the cast, paid them with canned salmon, flour, toilet water, shaving cream, mirrors. Everybody might have enjoyed a good time, had it not been for the rain and the heat, which combined to produce a disease called rain-tan. Even when it did not rain, there was so much moisture in the air that clothes became soaking wet in ten minutes. More pleasant were the native feasts which lasted from 11 a. m. to 3 p. m. A sample menu: crabs, lobsters, centipedes, octopus, green turtle, bonito, albacore, roast pig, chicken, duck, breadfruit, bananas, mummy apples, yams, coconut milk.

The film which came out of all of this is prettily produced, but fails to surprise. It is the old tale of white men’s hellish conduct among South Sea natives. Dr. Lloyd (Monte Blue), a good man gone to drink, is set adrift on a pest ship by his enemy, Pearl Trader Sebastian. The sea casts him upon an island, whose inhabitants have never before seen a white man. Dr. Lloyd behaves; the natives make a man of him. A chaste love springs up between him and Fayaway (Raquel Torres), village virgin, daughter of the chief. After they are married, Dr. Lloyd becomes greedy for native pearls. He lights a beacon, hoping to attract a passing ship to help him loot the village. Then he repents, but dastardly Pearl Trader Sebastian has seen the beacon. Sebastian and his crew ravage the island, leaving behind them the white men’s shadows—lust, liquor, disease, greed. Dr. Lloyd is killed while trying to defend his race-in-law.

There is nothing in the White Shadows of the South Seas as convincing as the tattooing of a native in that honest old film, Moana of the South Sea Islands.

At Yale. “Now, you must do something big for Yale,” says the daughter of a professor to an undergraduate who had come all the way from Argentine. And what does the Argentine? He tucks the pigskin under his dislocated shoulder and runs 90 yards for the winning touchdown in the last quarter. It is the worst rah-rah film on record. Rod La Roque as the Argentine is obnoxious. Jeanette Loff as the professor’s daughter is a pretty discovery.

Loves of an Actress is a tragedy, with Pola Negri reclining on a soft couch most of the time. She loves them all—bankers, counts, newspaper owners—but, deep down, she is disgusted with men. Then along comes a lean-hipped young diplomat (Nils Asther) and the Lady of the Couch is stricken with love-at-first-sight. “What does it matter?” she cries, “A man—a woman—before them the highway of life.” But, alas for the highway, a rejected count threatens to reveal her past and ruin the young diplomat’s career. Death comes to the couch.