by David Stanley
Over the years, Tahiti and Polynesia have provided novelists and
moviemakers with colorful subject matter. Early travelers told of
wanton women on tropical shores, and Fletcher Christian added drama
to the plot by leading a mutiny against the tyrannical Captain Bligh.
In 1934 American writers Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall
brought out the Bounty Trilogy. This three-part novel deals with
Christian's mutiny on the Bounty, the escape of Bligh and his loyal
crew members to Dutch Timor, and the colonization of Pitcairn Island
by Christian and his fellow mutineers.
The novel was an instant bestseller, and director Frank Lloyd soon
made it into a movie, Mutiny on the Bounty, starring Charles Laughton
and Clark Gable. In keeping with the mood of his time, the mutiny was
presented as a simplistic struggle between good and evil, and the
film won an Oscar for Best Picture in 1935.
A generation later Marlon Brando flew down to Tahiti to star in a
blockbuster remake of Mutiny on the Bounty. MGM's 1962 production is
still considered the most spectacular film ever made in the South
Pacific, in part due to the glorious scenery of Tahiti and Bora Bora.
Thousands of Tahitian extras appeared in the film, and Brando married
his first lady, Tarita Teriipaia.
In 1984, yet another version of The Bounty was released, with Sir
Anthony Hopkins as a resolute Bligh and Mel Gibson as an ambiguous
Christian. Of the three Bounty films, this is probably the most
historically accurate, and it's certainly the one with the greatest
psychological depth. It was largely filmed in Moorea's Opunohu Bay.
Another Nordhoff and Hall novel, The Hurricane, has been brought to
the silver screen twice. John Hall's 1937 film portrays a young
couple fleeing a despotic governor. In 1978 Dino de Laurentiis reshot
The Hurricane on Bora Bora, with Mia Farrow and Trevor Howard. The
resort built to house de Laurentiis' crew still exists as the Sofitel
Marara.
British novelist W. Somerset Maugham also had close ties to the South
Pacific. In 1943 Albert Lewin filmed The Moon and Sixpence, Maugham's
fictionalized account of Paul Gauguin's life in Polynesia. The
nonconformist painter's incompatibility with French colonial life
provided Maugham with a pretext to explore the role of the artist in
society. Another famous Maugham story, Rain, set in Samoa, has been
made into a movie several times.
Other well-known authors who have popularized the legend of Tahiti
include Herman Melville, Pierre Loti, Robert Louis Stevenson, Jack
London, Rupert Brooke, and James A. Michener. Their stories, plays,
and films have helped create the myth of a South Seas paradise. And
even today, Tahiti and Polynesia beckon to romantics wishing to live
their share of the dream.
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David Stanley is the author of Moon Handbooks Tahiti
http://www.southpacific.org/tahiti.html His online travel guide to
Tahiti and French Polynesia may be perused at
http://www.southpacific.org/text/finding_tahiti.html and his Tahiti
travel photos are at http://www.pacific-pictures.com/tahiti/index.html