La isla encantada

Today, I took out a disc of June Allyson & Van Johnson films I had recorded when she was Star of the Month earlier this year. The first film I watched is the one I want to mention now. It was HIGH BARBAREE. Another reviewer on the IMDb says it is part Leave It to Beaver and part mystical journey, and I really like that description. I think it also resembles a well-crafted episode of The Twilight Zone.

The picture is bolstered by MGM's top-notch production values, and the leads are well restrained and ably supported by Thomas Mitchell and Cameron Mitchell (no relation). There is also an early performance by Claude Jarman Jr. that really stands out and captures the viewers' attention. I feel like with so many excellent elements, this is a film that should be more widely known. It's a relatively unheralded classic.

I haven't seen this for decades, but I do remember it. The pilot, reminiscing to his shipmate, while downed on a tropical island, goes on and on about his past experiences, including his dream since childhood about an island paradise called High Barbaree.

On and on he goes, as one reviewer observed, slowly boring his companion to death. And the theme and throughout his ramblings, the subject of High Barbaree recurs.

SPOILER FOLLOWS: Toward the end of the film, a Polynesian native appears, and offers him entry to High Barbaree, but he realizes that he shouldn't go there then. Not if he wants to keep on living. For High Barbaree _is_ Paradise (as in Heaven).

It's a very slow film, but there have been far worse.

I grew up watching movies from the 30's and 40's as a kid in the 50's. The early days of T.V. had a lot of time to fill and they did it with movies. Remember the Fabulous 52!, a movie of the week at 11:15 on Saturday nights? I probably knew those movies better than the ones from my own era. I was a particular fan of Van Johnson and June Allyson. This movie haunted me and my youthful imagination. I probably first saw this movie at age 12 when it was already 10 years old. Everyone needs a 'High Barbaree' in his life, a dream put there by some crazy uncle like the character Thomas Mitchell plays so well in this movie. I wish they'd put this movie on DVD so I could buy it and show it to my family and friends.

Van Johnson plays a downed flier in the Pacific War, the only survivor with his co-pilot Cameron Mitchell in a plane they've managed to make seaworthy and float. As a lad he was told some tall tales of a legendary island like Shangri-La in the Pacific called High Barbaree. He and that teller of tall tales Johnson's uncle Thomas Mitchell actually plotted where the island should be and low and behold Johnson and Cameron Mitchell are down in the Pacific right where this mythical island is supposed to be.

In reading some of the books on western voyages of discovery a number of mapmakers in the 15th. 16th, and 17th centuries made mention of a mythical island called Hy-Brasil. You'll find it on many charts of the period. How the legend started who knows, but it was real to a lot of people just as High Barbaree is here.

On that voyage Johnson tells Cameron Mitchell all about his life in flashbacks, about High Barbaree and about his life and choice of career. The women aren't left out as he has two women interested in him, girl next door June Allyson and rich girl Marilyn Maxwell.

High Barbaree is a nice film about the hopes and dreams of one young man who went to war. Does Van Johnson find High Barbaree? For that you watch the film for.

Van Johnson and June Allyson head a talented cast in this enchantingly dotty romantic fantasy about true love in peace and war. The romance begins when they're children, and the childhood scenes have some charmingly surreal moments, such as when the two run away to join the circus. Someone must have been reading Freud in his spare time when making this one. There are enough symbols, phallic and otherwise, to fill a fair-sized textbook. Director Jack Conway did an admirable job on the film, with beautifully composed shots which at times recall the best silent pictures. He had flair for investing what are, on the surface, mundane images,--a water tower, a tropical island--with a subliminal power rare in a Hollywood movie. Since much of the story is related in flashback, there's a slight but unmistakable distortion involved in what unfolds on the screen that makes the movie feel at times like a dream. There are strange, abrupt transitions,--a storm comes seemingly out of nowhere--that make the movie resonate in one's memory years after one has seen it. Corny as hell, this is in many respects a remarkable film.