A probably well-meaning film that tries to argue against racism all while demonstrating a patronizing, white-centric attitude that ably pinpoints why we haven't come nearly as far as we should have 50 years later.
The two main characters are a white nurse and an older French colonialist. She falls in love with him, but soon he reveals that he was previously married, that his wife was Polynesian, that she bore him two half-Polynesian children and then died. The wife and children are complete non-entities in the film, serving only as a narrative prop to "expose" the white nurse's racial biases and force the two lovers apart. The scene when they fight, set at night against a gorgeous purple and gold color scheme that made me wish every scene in every movie ever could look that good, is the only really resonant piece in the entire film, dealing mostly with the fact that the children would be a constant reminder of the fact that the man she loves had had sex with a woman of color. It's exceptionally didactic, but in a way that didn't bother me much and actually ends with one of the few memorable songs in the whole show.
The Frenchman, by contrast, is completely unburdened by any notions of racism. His status as a rich colonialist with a servant who never once speaks in the film is completely ignored, as is the rampant exoticism of the film's attitudes towards the Tonkanese locals on the island. Another of the main characters, a Marine lieutenant, is introduced to, and immediately falls in love with, a Tonkanese girl who speaks almost no English. There's a horrifying song number in which her mother sings a song and the daughter mimes the words she's singing along. That the film can slap the wrists of one character, all while championing his love of this cliched depiction of mysterious, submissive, exotic beauty is exactly why Malcolm X once said that the fight for equal rights would never get anywhere if they let liberal white people help them.
(Note: Being a liberal white person, I don't actually believe that's true, but it's easy to understand why he would think so, especially back then.)
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