JohnHowardReid Copyright 4 January 1938 by Samuel Goldwyn, Inc., Ltd. Presented by Samuel Goldwyn. Released through United Artists. New York opening at the Astor, 9 November 1937. U.S. release: 10 November 1937. Australian release: 31 March 1938. 12 reels. 102 minutes. NOTES: Prestigious Hollywood award, Sound Recording (defeating The Girl Said No, Hitting a New High, In Old Chicago, Lost Horizon, The Life of Emile Zola, Maytime, One Hundred Men and a Girl, Topper and Wells Fargo). Also nominated for Supporting Actor, Thomas Mitchell (defeated by Joseph Schildkraut in The Life of Emile Zola), and Best Music Score (One Hundred Men and a Girl). Number 10 on The Film Daily's annual Best Films poll of U.S. critics.COMMENT: Of the 80 feature films produced by Sam Goldwyn, my personal favorite is "The Hurricane". (It's also second only to "Stagecoach" in my preferred list of John Ford movies.) Why? Well, firstly (and least importantly). it's a great spectacle. The use of miniatures is occasionally obvious, but the way that hurricane is staged and edited just overwhelms the senses. Secondly, here is a movie that appeals to the ear, with convincingly dramatic dialogue and a haunting musical theme. Thirdly (and now we're getting into the really important qualities), "The Hurricane" is a visual paradise — superbly photographed, attractively lit and composed. Fourthly, it has a strong story with believable and sympathetic characters. And fifthly, it is enacted by an absolutely faultless cast. It has been argued that Lamour is just a decorative sarong girl, Hall merely a personable swimmer, Astor too glamorous a governor's wife, and Massey too perversely dogmatic a white supremist. These claims (and similar criticisms) are nonsense. The performances are totally enthralling and completely convincing. When Terangi is thrown into prison, the director is not afraid to focus on Hall's anguished face; when Marama spurns Germaine's sympathy, Miss Lamour's manner betrays not the slightest trace of artifice or falsity. Admittedly, Massey is doggedly over-zealous and even theatrically paranoid — just as Carradine is over-sadistic — but these emphases are necessary for the dramatic forcefulness of the plot. All in all, It's a gripping story — worthy of the writers of Mutiny on the Bounty — and it's been translated to the screen with enhanced force and vigor thanks to the visual expertise of Goldwyn and his entire cast and crew. The film editor, for instance, has performed numerous unsung miracles in pacey yet smooth cutting of the material from the various units. For example a dockside scene directed by Ford is deftly topped with a closing shot of Hall untying a canoe directed by Heisler. In general, Ford directed all the studio sequences — except the Basevi special effects such as the hurricane and the studio storm with Hall in his canoe and all the tank shots, e.g. Hall fighting the shark. On the other hand, Heisler directed all the exterior location footage, including the diving stunts with Paul Stader and the breathtaking sequence in which Terangi/Stader just misses his ship.

Claudio Carvalho In the Island of Manukura, a French colony in the South Seas, the joyful Terangi (Jon Hall) is a leader among the natives and the first mate of the Katopua, the tall ship of Captain Nagle (Jerome Cowan). Terangi gets married with Marama (Dorothy Lamour) and sooner he sails to Tahiti. While in a bar playing with other natives, Terangi is offended by an alcoholic racist French and he hits his face, breaking his jaw. Despite the testimony of Captain Nagle, Terangi is sentenced to six months of forced labor since the victim had political connections with the Powers That Be. Captain Nagle asks the Governor Eugene DeLaage (Raymond Massey) to uses his influence to help Terangi, but the governor refuses. Terangi unsuccessfully tries to escape from the prison, and each attempt increases his sentence. Eight years later, he finally escapes and his jailbreak is celebrated in Manukura. Father Paul (C. Aubrey Smith) finds his canoe and brings Terangi hidden to the island. But a devastating hurricane also arrives in the island threatening the dwellers. "The Hurricane" is a tale of injustice in the South Seas that recalls Victor Hugo's Les Misérables. The saga of the sweet Terangi is very similar to the story of Jean Valjean, both characters victims of the injustice of the French criminal system in those years. The sequence of the hurricane is very impressive for a 1947 feature. I can not say that the hurricane was brought in a divine intervention since the despicable governor saves his life in the end and most of the natives die. My vote is eight.Title (Brazil): "O Furacão" ("The Hurricane")

carvalheiro "The Hurricane" (1937) directed by John Ford is something like a lightening on a dark sky nowhere in South Pacific and it seems that the location was almost imposed by an adaptation, where the director during the shootings was for the most time laconic in his own direction's style of the time. In another words, showing the strength of the Earth above an island, cutting the edges of this reaction edited by the impact of the huge swallows waving against it : as a blind giant coming again and again, smashing the cliffs on the ground with its water mills, in a black and white picture of as almost science off fiction ; as though, poetry of nature it was instantly translated by such features of deaf intriguing machination, without any control by the smallest of the human beings present there. But out of such an attractive and storming leisure for the movie goers from yesterday as till tomorrow, as did a catastrophe movie as this one in Samoa, that is still of course a lesson of perfect conception of a tiny community, completely transformed in waste, by what we know now as atmospheric intervention. The most of the time during this fiction the reality of images and sound were enough to secure the viewer, astonished with the skill manner of Ford and his team, controlling the march of events as it was a realistic view of a hurricane as monster of the nature nearby. Who cares about the local population ? The priest in his church where are the inhabitants, that took the good way for searching a refuge, well placed for staying alive during the storm, it reveals that is the better place in the island as if it was the house of God the true antidote against the untempered sin of the natural turmoil. But this symbolism it has also in this movie only a partial effect within the mind of the viewers not exactly for preaching faith, but because its colonial architecture which it seems is strong enough to support such event, before the eyes and ears of the survivors. So that, such thing occurs when incapacity of human beings for another solution is at stake, for the enormous responsibility securing children, old people and domestic animals, all protecting a subsistence for a way of living in this kind of territories, lost on the ocean and at its mercy.The story works well and a little boy lies, when someone asked him where he and his mate were before, and he tells that he was fishing. If this tale in 1937 it works only as a movie for youngsters, savages and sailors from the end of the world, it was perhaps the reason why Ford was also so laconic during the rehearsal before the camera. When such a mechanical artifact for making special effects it was for him maybe the more important of the movie, likewise at the time of construction of dams elsewhere. Why such a reverse of desert on the soul of mankind ? There is the sensation that the director was concerned with the idea of the beginning of the world, by the sense of drowning and submerging land. Too by the inaccuracy of destiny with such an episodic natural event, from the bottom of the cracked undersea on the shores of an island, in the middle of the ocean surface. Like also imagining it with fair play, for a tale about escaping from there sound and saved for another human adventure of discovery and conquest, in affirmation of solitariness of soul and flesh, like the prisoner escaping on the boat viewing nothing in contrary in such a stormy environment watching himself such an opportunity and apparently without the need of any help.

blanche-2 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.