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Somewhere in the South Seas: Henry Shoesmith (Ramon Novarro), son of a
white father and native mother, has inherited their store and land, but he
prefers the simple life, lieing in the sun all day, doing nothing or
singing songs and making music. And why would he want to do anything else,
his land sees to it that he always has enough to eat and the like. Madge
(Renée Adorée) is a prostitute with a heart of gold who feels
inexplicably drawn to him, even though she knows he doesn't love her back
... One day, Henry spots a girl on a yacht, Tito (Dorothy Janis), a
half-blood like him, and immediately pays her a visit to woo her - but her
ward, businessman Slater (Donald Crisp), chases him away, because he wants
to raise her a white and Christian woman, unlike Henry, who's a pagan
because he chooses to be. Of course, Slater's perception of Christianity
limits itself to going to church every Sunday, being friends with the
priest, and seeing to it that the girl in his care isn't cavorting with
strangers. Christian qualities like charity and brotherly love have never
made it into his vocabulary, and actually he's a bigot, a racist, and
lusts after his own ward, a lust that's only waiting to explode. And as
for being a businessman - even though he likes to pretend to be shrewd,
allknowing, successful and generally superior to all the locals, he has
fallen on hard times ... and only a deal with Henry could save him from
bankrupcy. Fortunately for Slater, Henry is naive and forgiving, so when
Slater asks him about harvesting rights of his cocoanut trees, Henry signs
them over for free, even though Slater has pushed him off his yacht just
the other day. But Henry can't eat all of his cocoanuts himself anyways,
and then there's Tito to consider, whom he will see a lot more of if he
has a business deal with Slater. Tito and Henry get along increasingly
well, so at the first opportunity, Slater gets her out of Henry's sight,
and tells him to really get her, he first has to become a successful
businessman. Naive as he is, Henry takes these words to heart ... and
makes a whole mess out of what has been a profitable thing when he did
nothing in the course of a year. And suddenly he has to learn that all of
his debts to the bank have been bought by none other than Slater, who now
has easy access to all his possessions. Henry has lost everything, but he
doesn't care much, he still has a native hut in the mountains Slater knows
nothing about, and he figures he and Tito ... Slater realizes that there
is too strong an attraction between Henry and Tito, so he decides to marry
her himself - but with the help of Madge, Henry manages to steal Tito from
right under Slater's clutches. Slater later steals her back, though, then
drags her to his yacht to beat and rape her - but Henry interferes, and
after the showdown in shark-infested waters, Slater meets his fate in a
shark's belly while Henry and Tito are allowed to proceed to a bright
future together. At first, this film seems to be like your
typical piece of escapism (and the beautiful Tahitian locations certainly
contribute to that), but beneath the nice surface, one can find quite a
few quite serious undercurrents, like a strong stance against racism (even
if neither Ramon Novarro nor Dorothy Janis look particularly Indonesian)
as well as against bigotry masking as Christianity, and the church as such
doesn't fare too well in this film, either. And yet, the film is not a
message movie but works beautifully as a adventure/romance, it's
wonderfully filmed, light-footedly directed, nicely paced - and somehow
becomes a piece of escapism after all. By the way, this film
was shot in silent, but a soundtrack was added prior to realease,
consisting mostly of musical score and a few background noises, but also a
handful of onscreen songs, which mostly seem unsynchronized with the
onscreen action though.
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amazon.co.uk
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find The Pagan at adultvideouniverse.com
