Walk Into Paradise

Film dedicated to the colonial progress of Australia in the Territory of Papua and New Guinea, perhaps the first fiction movie set in an authentic way in this country. The large participation of the tribes of Asaro, Wahgi and Upper Sepik valleys offers a great amount of animated crowd pictures and spectacular characters of chiefs. Set in some way like a fictionalized documentary, it praises the good work of Australian colonization which should "bring civilization to the most primitive people". As an Australian-French coproduction, the music of the French composer Georges Auric (Le Salaire de la peur), from the famous Six Group, gives pace to the march of this inexorable progress.

Kelly (Reginald Lye, Eureka Stockade), nicknamed Shark-Eye, a pioneer, brings back the body of his brother Joey, who has died in a not yet mapped area within the highlands. There, in a place he has called "Paradise Valley", he has found oil. The district officer Fred Kaad (himself) proposes to open the area to progress and prospection. He joins to Kelly the service of Steve (Chips Rafferty, King of the Coral Sea from the same Australian director Lee Robinson), a member of the Department of Native Affairs, who will lead the expedition. Steve chooses to help him the Papuan sergeant major Towalaka (played by Somu), an ancient comrade during the war. But they have also to take with them a French doctor from the United Nations services, who happens to be a woman, Louise (Françoise Christophe, Femmes Libres), who works on a new serum to fight malaria.

And the long "walk into paradise" begins, by boat, then by canoes and finally on foot. Will it really be the promised paradise? The American, more cautious, have rather renamed the movie "walk into hell". And indeed they soon meet hostile tribes, one because a crocodile hunter, Jeff (Pierre Cressoy, Panique à Gibraltar), has shot a sacred white bird of paradise.

Will they manage to reach this faraway Paradise to open it to the modern era? Will they find the right way to communicate with the natives and conciliate them by proving the good brought by Australian authorities? Will Louise be able to develop an efficient treatment against malaria, and shall she be touched by the charm of the adventurer Jeff? The film, remaining often too merely demonstrative, finds however in its last twenty minutes a real dramatic breath.

Long before Australia had a real film industry, Chips Rafferty and Lee Robinson made movies in an old picture theatre at Bondi Junction (Sydney). They began modestly making small budget films for the Australian markert but soon realized the importance of International distribution.

With no help from the government, they arranged their own co-production deal with a French company. WALK INTO PARADISE (HELL) and THE STOWAWAY with Martine Carol were two of the joint ventures.

Rafferty and Robinson made no money from these films because the French took all the cream but both films are to tribute to Rafferty, Robinson and the fledgling Australian Film Industry of the time.

WALK INTO PARADISE is an epic adventure on a grand scale and was filmed almost entirely in the wilds of Papua/New Guinea. It still has a lot of entertainment to offer.

This film must have been an extremely strenuous undertaking both as producer & star for the late Chips Rafferty.

There's the usual paternalistic attitude to the locals and problems with witch doctors, but not excessively so to modern sensibilities; and the tone is in the main quietly level-headed. After Rafferty's predictable initial opposition to bringing French woman doctor Françoise Christophe along, she too is eventually allowed to settle into the team and behave like a pro.

And Carl Kayser's Eastman Color photography is terrific!

The island of New Guinea in its recorded history seems to be in a bad location. The western half of it was colonized by the Dutch and is now part of Indonesia.

The eastern half now Papua has been at some point English, German, Australian. Walk Into Paradise was made while Australia held a mandate from the Trusteeship Council of the United Nations. Who run's the island is a big concern in Canberra. Spread over the northern shore of the Australian continent like a canopy, New Guinea was the scene of some of the fiercest fighting in World War II. A lot of Australian lives were lost so that the Japanese never mounted an invasion of Australia proper. That being said, for those natives in New Guinea, some of the most primitive people on Earth, they suffered as well because of geography.

I saw this film as a youngster as a second feature of a double bill back in the early 60s. Very few Australian films were shown in the USA then. This one was particularly relevant because the news at the time was filled with the disappearance of Michael Rockefeller, son of Nelson Rockefeller. Americans got to see on the movie screen just what Michael Rockefeller had gotten himself lost in. Made the tragedy all the more real for the general public.

It's one of the most realistic jungle pictures ever done. You can't count the studio Hollywood product before King Solomon's Mines or The African Queen. Americans are terribly ignorant of Africa and most of the rest of the tropical world because of Hollywood.

America also got to see Australia's biggest film star, Chips Rafferty. On the occasions I have seen him, Rafferty never disappoints and definitely not here. He plays a district officer who's sent into the jungle to locate a gold strike.

There are no Hollywood style heroics here. Rafferty plays a man who's just doing a very difficult job under trying conditions of heat, rain, and occasional fever. Gritty and realistic is the word here.

Papua got its independence in 1975 so that world is gone now. But the jungle is there and should be seen in this film.

With the right marketing this film could be re-released in Australia and France, and possibly elsewhere. It's a solid entry into the "adventure" genre, with slightly wooden but totally endearing performances by the cast.

Chips Rafferty is quite charming in a blue-collar no-nonsense sort of a way, and it's extraordinary to see how the Australian film persona has evolved since then.

Some of the imagery of Papua and New Guinea is breathtaking, and would be utterly impossible to film now in light of security problems there now.

Come on Village Roadshow, do some forward-thinking PR and distribute this gem!!!!