The Hurricane

JON HALL stars as a hot-tempered native on a fictional South Seas island called Manakoora, run by a strict martinet of a governor, played by RAYMOND MASSEY. After petty theft and a brawl, Hall is hauled into jail and given a strict sentence that separates him from his new wife, a native girl Marama played by DOROTHY LAMOUR.

Hall and Lamour are both in their physical prime. Hunky Hall is shown to advantage in the central role in a series of adventurous escapes from prison, climaxed by his authority in leading some of the islanders to safety during the climactic storm. Close-ups magnify Lamour's sultry beauty and handsome Hall is likewise photographed like a Greek God in profile. Ford has directed a film rich in character and settings with some stunning B&W photography.

Aside from the leads, good character roles are abundant. RAYMOND MASSEY, MARY ASTOR (as his loyal wife), THOMAS MITCHELL (another one of his drunken doctor roles) and JOHN CARRADINE as a sadistic warden, are all memorable.

Escapist entertainment with a South Seas setting and two photogenic co-stars who would both move on to better things in the '40s. But Jon Hall never had a better role than he does here as Terangi, the resourceful man who dives off a steep cliff into the calm waters of an enchanted island paradise during one of his many escapes.

As for "the hurricane", it's so realistic that you have to see it to believe it. And all this was before CGI effects--a brilliant job.

Alfred Newman's exotic background music is woven around a theme later called "The Moon of Manakoora" and turned into a popular song for Dorothy Lamour to warble. After seeing her in this film, no wonder she became the sarong girl of the '40s.

There is a great cast in this superb piece of Hollywood hokum. Jon Hall and Dorothy Lamour are in there physical prime, Raymond Massey brings dignity and his considerable acting skill to his role as the harsh Island governor, the wonderfully photogenic C. Aubrey Smith (was he ever young I wonder) is the priest and Thomas Mitchell plays his usual drunken Irishman (even though he's supposed to be French). The corn ball plot moves swiftly and is played sincerely and the climatic hurricane scenes are still awe inspiring

For sheer entertainment I give it 9 out of ten.

Sure, the leads are silly, and there's a great deal of mannered melodrama to endure, but don't overlook this. Academy Award nominations for Thomas Mitchell and Alfred Newman, and a well-deserved Oscar win for Thomas Moulton, the credited sound guy. The 10 minute Hurricane sequence plays entirely without music; just sound effects and scattered dialog, shouted over the wind and waves. You'll forget that the wind is ringing the church bell constantly through the storm, until the church is washed away and the bell sound is suddenly gone. The visual action and stunts are extraordinary and ahead of their time. I show this sequence to my film sound students, and I wish I could get it on DVD!

Jon Hall, Dorothy Lamour and an excellent cast are all caught in "The Hurricane," a 1937 film and the first to win a Special Effects Oscar. The original novel was written by Jon Hall's uncle.

On the island of Manakoora, Terangi (Hall) and Marama (Lamour) marry amidst a happy celebration, though their happiness will be short-lived. Terangi must deliver cargo to Tahiti, though Marama has a premonition about the trip and warns him not to go.

While in Tahiti, he gets into a barroom fight and is sentenced to 6 months in prison. The governor of Manakoora, DeLaage (Raymond Massey), despite the urgings of his friends and his wife (Mary Astor) refuses to ask for Terangi to be brought back to Manakoora and put on parole.

Unable to endure a life with no freedom, and desperate to get back home, Terangi continually attempts to escape. Each time he does, 2 years are added to his sentence until he has to serve 16 years.

At last, Terangi escapes and makes his way back to his island, where he meets his daughter for the first time. Knowing that DeLaage will capture him and return him to Tahiti, islanders prepare to help the family sail to another island. But a hurricane (actually a typhoon) strikes.

Besides those mentioned, "The Hurricane" also stars Thomas Mitchell as the French doctor on Manakoora, C. Aubrey Smith as the local priest, Jerome Cowan as Terangi's captain, and John Carradine as a sadistic prison guard.

The effects are astounding and are a no-miss, particularly considering it is 1937! The tremendous winds, the rising waters, the trees falling, buildings collapsing - all magnificent.

John Ford did an excellent job of directing this film, which has racism as its underpinning - the prison sentence was the result of a so-called dark man hitting a white man; and DeLaage's patrician and cruel attitude has racism at the base of it

I disagree with one of the comments that states that Hall was a white-skinned movie star trying to pass himself off as a dark man; Hall's mother was Tahitian.

Dorothy Lamour, exotic and beautiful, has very little to do in this film except look frightened and lovely - you can count her lines on one hand.

Hall, a total hunk if there ever was one, has more to say and do but one is so distracted by his face and physique that it becomes difficult to pay attention to anything else. The acting burden falls to Mitchell, Massey, Astor, Carradine, and Cowan, who are terrific.

Ford isn't known for his tales of the sea, but obviously he was good at everything. He wouldn't see water again until the 1950s. Lamour carried on the sarong tradition in better roles, and Hall worked into the mid-'60s; at the age of 65, dying of cancer and in excruciating pain, he shot himself.

Highly recommended as a feast of skin and brilliant special effects.

Directed by John Ford with an extraordinary eye for detail and with tremendous sympathy and sensuality, this picture will be a surprise for those who only know the later Ford films that explore the male worlds of military life on the frontier. In those, Ford seems to take the side of authoritarian severity, as if he had come to agree with the Raymond Massey character of THE HURRICANE, for whom human nature can and should be broken on the wheel of law. But in this earlier film you can feel Ford's deep yearning for the freedom and eroticism of a natural life of the body and the senses.

I grew up with THE HURRICANE, which was a staple of TV viewing throughout the '60s and '70s. But seeing it now for the first time in years I am struck by how subversive of convention it must have seemed in the '30s, and how much it was in sync with the cultural and political wars of the late '60s. Terangi, the kind, capable natural man wants merely to live freely and happily, but he is imprisoned and tortured and unwittingly finds himself in opposition to a rule of law that is anti-love, anti-life, anti-human. Every frame of this film sides with Dorothy Lamour and Jon Hall, the gorgeous young lovers, against the hard fanaticism of Massey's governor. Meanwhile the priest, the doctor, the sea captain and the governor's own wife are sensible, kind-hearted (if condescending) humanists who are on the correct side of the debate, but who are helpless in the face of insane obedience to authority.

Yes, the hurricane is marvelously done, impressive and absorbing, and it acts as a very necessary catharsis after the anxiety aroused by the many injustices Terangi must endure. But what seems to matter most to Ford is the idyll of sexy young love, not seen in films since the first two pre-code TARZAN pictures from MGM. Once married, the couple are stripped of their western clothes by their friends and returned to their near-naked state wearing sarongs and flower leis. It is Lamour's character who signals to her husband that she is ready for the honeymoon to begin, and the camera follows the happy couple to their private island where they lay in the sand to make love under palm trees. Just as sensual is the morning after, where Lamour raises the shades of their hut, letting the sun fall on her husband's naked back, and her hair falls around him as she leans down to kiss him tenderly on the neck. This must have been a powerful vision of romance and eroticism to workaday, Depression-weary audiences. The island scenes cast a naive spell, like something from Melville's early books of south sea island life. Ford films these like silent screen montages, with dissolving images of swaying palms, bare, tanned legs, the look of young, tawny bodies and shining hair. Rather than just a professional job for him, his work on THE HURRICANE seems deeply felt.

Lamour was just right here: Though not yet the wry comic actress she would become, she was rather gravely beautiful in a way unusual for an American star then and now, full of languor and sometimes a startling natural grace. The way Marama suddenly pulls her hair back from her face when first seeing Terangi after eight years is an expressive gesture, full of emotion. Hall was very appealing, with the grace of an athlete and for all his muscularity there is something feline about him. And for those aware of rumors that director Ford may have nursed closeted yearnings all his life (as revealed by Maureen O'Hara in her autobiography of 2005) the fevered way that Hall's body and face are photographed in the midst of his torments will have an added charge and interest.