Bird Of Paradise (1932)

A young man (Joel McCrea) working on the crew of a yacht sailing the South Seas is saved from a shark attack by a native girl (Dolores Del Rio). They fall in love and he decides to stay on the island but their relationship is "taboo" to her people. Nominally based on a play by Richard Walton Tully, the producer David O. Selznick and the director King Vidor have jettisoned the majority of the play except for the end. What we get is still hokum but hokum of a very high quality. The dialogue is quite childish but the cinematographer Clyde De Vinna has given the film an attractive sheen with an assist from the Hawaiian locations. The two leads are very attractive and appealing and it doesn't hurt that they spend most of the film in various forms of undress. This is a pre-code film so we have Del Rio (or her body double) swimming in the nude! Max Steiner did the underscore and Busby Berkeley choreographed Miss Del Rio's native dances. Remade in 1951. With John Halliday, Agostino Borgato and Lon Chaney Jr.