Database – sample

The film’s story deals with Matthew Lloyd, a white doctor on a South Sea trading post, who sympathizes with native pearl divers who are exploited by the trader Sebastian. Lloyd gets into a fight with Sebastian over his treatment of one of the divers and Sebastian has his revenge by casting him adrift on board an abandoned ship. During a storm, Lloyd reaches another island where the natives, who have never seen a white man, consider him a god. Mehevi, the chief, and Fayaway, his daughter, take a special liking to Lloyd and call him Matta Loa. Lloyd falls in love with Fayaway but Mehevi forbids their union because she is tapau. After saving Fayaway’s little brother from drowning, Lloyd is granted permission to marry her.[1] When Lloyd sees that the natives discard pearls when preparing oysters for dinner, greed (the “instinct of his ruthless race”) takes over him and the desire to return to civilization overruns him. He lights a beacon at night, hoping a ship will see it. Fayaway feels betrayed by this, and Lloyd repents. The next morning, a ship responds to the beacon and comes ashore. Lloyd recognizes Sebastian and his crew on board and tries to convince Mehevi to turn them away. Lloyd and Sebastian fight each other again, but this time a member of Sebastian’s crew shoots Lloyd. He dies in Fayaway’s arms. After his death, Sebastian builds a trading outpost and Fayaway, dressed in Western fashion, mourns the loss of Matta Loa at the foot of a stone idol. A fade to black symbolizes the shadows that have fallen on the South Seas.

“Slight though the story is, its motive is strong. Purporting to show the corrupting influence of the white man, it begins when Sebastian, a villainous storekeeper, trades a dollar watch for a magnificent pearl, and urges the diver to get more of them. Doctor Lloyd, a drink-sodden derelict, upbraids Sebastian and eventually is lashed to the steering wheel of a vessel by the storekeeper, who expects never again to see the disturber. A typhoon wrecks the ship, and Doctor Lloyd is cast upon the shore of a distant island inhabited by a virgin tribe. When he is about to wed the chief's daughter, Sebastian, reappears, bent on exploiting· these natives as he has the others. Against the entreaties of Doctor Lloyd, Sebastian, and his crew are allowed to land, and in the ensuing mêléé [sic.] Lloyd ·is killed. But Sebastian, gains his ends, for the conclusion of the picture shows the innocent natives in the throes of civilization as practiced by the whites.” (Lusk 70)

The idea to shoot White Shadows began with Irving Thalberg, head of production at MGM, who bought the rights to Fredrick O’Brien’s book because of the suggestiveness of its title. Thalberg assigned Hunt Stromberg to produce, who after attending a private screening of Moana was enthusiastic about the erotic possibilities of the project (Calder-Marshall 123). Flaherty was hired to direct the film and work with the assigned screenwriter, Laurence Stallings. Soon enough, they were both second-guessing the choice of O’Brien’s book as source material and tried to convince Stromberg of using Typee instead. The request was denied and as a consequence Stallings resigned (Calder-Marshall 123; Langer 45–46). Stallings was replaced by Ray Doyle and Jack Cunningham, who renamed the project Southern Skies. The progress they made on it seemed to please Flaherty (Langer 46).
In spite of Moana’s critical praise, the studio felt uneasy about letting Flaherty run free. They assigned John McCarthy as co-director. Flaherty’s and McCarthy’s personalities seemed to clash right away, and McCarthy asked to be relieved of his contract. The studio then assigned D. S. van Dyke, who traveled with Flaherty and the crew to Papetee, where they set up a working lab to process the dailies. Flaherty continued to have trouble with his coworkers and three weeks before they wrapped production (by then they had 30,000 feet of processed footage) he was kicked out of the project entirely and his name was removed from the film’s credit (Langer 46).
White Shadows was MGM’s first sound movie (synchronized music and sound effects but no synchronized dialogue), and therefore a gamble, since the transition to sound was not perceived to be inevitable at its onset.
Fans exchanged divided opinions about the innovation. In a letter to the editor of Screenland, moviegoer Mildred Woods admired the whistling scene (where Lloyd teaches Fayaway how to whistle) as cute and believes that “Had it been a silent picture it wouldn't have had half the kick for me,” while a contributor to The Film Spectator denounces the use of sound in sections of the movie as “forced” (Wood 8; “Sound Already Is Taken for Granted” 6).
The fact that Thalberg saw potential in White Shadows as an example of what MGM talkies should look like in the future suggests that South Sea movies were perceived as bankable by producers and that they believed there was a sizable audience for them (MGM had only produced two South Sea movies by then, see fig. 4). Overall, White Shadows was received to great acclaim in the press and became the first sound movie to be exhibited in Paris (“‘White Shadows’ First Talkie Seen in Paris” 2). It was mostly praised for its cinematography and its local color, with one reviewer describing it as the most beautiful photography ever seen, “made more so by the very locale itself.” Another lauded its “pictorial poems” of the landscape. Its cinematographer, Clyde De Vinna, was given an Academy Award for his work on it (“Observations: ‘White Shadows’” 1; Lusk 70; “De Vinna Wins Academy Award For Outstanding Photography” 20). Picture-Play Monthly announced the shooting of The Pagan (1929), the next MGM-van Dyke collaboration on a South Sea location, with the title “More Local Color” (Schallert and Schallert 71).