Even without the influence of Flaherty, the film is "too slow" for at least one other commentator, that is to say, probably just about right for any non-US audience. It makes use of local non-professional actors and actors and gives a dignified and not altogether paradisal picture of traditional island life. It may not have been shot as it claims in the Marquesas but was nevertheless made on location in Tahiti and the cinematography is not in the least studio-bound nor overly preoccupied with continuity or glamorous "star"-focus. Yet I have to admit this seems to me in some ways the classic US film at its best before the influence of "sound" has become fully felt. It is a producer's and cutter's film par excellence, chosen by Irving Thalberg himself and directed by the notorious "one-shot Woody" Robert Flaherty who was initially to have directed was sacked for working too slowly. Normally speaking this film ought to represent everything that I tend to find crass and mediocre in US film. And the value of the film is not of course there at all but lies, as with any other good silent film, in the strong script and excellent cinematography by Clyde de Vinna (who received the Oscar and would work on all Van Dyke's "exotic" films of the next few years - The Pagan, Trader Horn, The Eskimo) and Bob Roberts who has worked with Flaherty on Moana (1926) and would go on rather surprisingly to become one of the principal cinematographers in the flourishing Argentinian film industry. It has a musical score by William Axt intermingled with a few sound effects but, since such orchestral scores were already common in major cinemas during the late silent era, only the degree of synchronisation (the first work of MGM sound recordist Douglas Shearer) represented any kind of innovation. Given the obsession with "sound" that dominated the US cinema industry in 1928 this meant that all criticism of the film tended to concentrate on whether it ws or was not a genuine "sound" film - which quite evidently it was not. MGM did this film no favour by promoting it as their first "sound" film.
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