Anna et les Maoris

Apologies to the other two 'Kiwi' reviewers but "Two Loves" ("Spinster"in N.Z.) is not all that bad. To start with,just how many of the most successful movies in history are historically accurate and who cares anyway ? More importantly,the three leads were all accomplished actors with box-office appeal. Shirley MacLaine gave something unique and interesting to most of her roles. Jack Hawkins,always good value,gave off an appropriate air of integrity in this role. Laurence Harvey was not out of his depth either.Here,he played a rather avant-garde character;a free thinker,frustrated at having landed himself in a parochial environment. His singing was deliberately off-key (listen to his sublime King Arthur in "Camelot"). Being a Laurence Harvey fan,I'm tempted to rate this one a ten but realistically,I'll bring it down to a seven.

Anna Vorontosov (Shirley MacLaine) is an American teacher in a rural New Zealand community with mostly Maoris students. The new senior inspector William Abercrombie (Jack Hawkins) threatens her work. She has a relationship with self-destructive fellow teacher Paul Lathrope (Laurence Harvey).

This is supposedly Maoris culture. I wonder if this could have been a small New Zealand indie. I imagine getting into some real culture and some epic New Zealand landscape. The studio insisted on a star and got MacLaine. I don't like her character. I don't see her teaching technique as that great. I want to like the kids but I don't really know them. Shirley MacLaine has done better. She does some overwrought acting in an overly overwrought scene. It's bad writing. I certainly don't see any chemistry between her and Laurence Harvey who is playing a horrible drunk. It's dreary. The story meanders around without much tension.

American schoolteacher on the North Island of New Zealand--unmarried and, indeed, untouched by any man--smokes and takes a nip of brandy once in awhile but cannot escape her Puritan attitudes towards sexual relations. Two men take a fancy to her: a reckless stud with suicidal tendencies and an older school district inspector estranged from his wife and children. Mercurial adaptation of Sylvia Ashton-Warner's novel "Spinster" features some very odd color schemes (from the emerald green landscapes to Shirley MacLaine's house of many colors), not to mention a peculiarly artificial schoolhouse filled with very emotional children. The melodrama on hand eventually proves too much for MacLaine, who dithers about eccentrically but is still unable to come up with an interesting characterization (this mainly the fault of screenwriter Ben Maddow, who treats virginity as an incurable disorder, physical as well as psychological). However, the material is just odd or offbeat enough to keep one watching, and the men (Laurence Harvey and Jack Hawkins) are both very good. ** from ****

Watching this film Two Loves I could not help but compare it to the film made of the James Michener novel Hawaii that starred Julie Andrews, Max Von Sydow, and Richard Harris. MacLaine could have been Julie's great granddaughter.

Julie was a missionary from New England gone out among the Polynesian natives to learn them some Christianity and other things that a good New England puritan deems necessary. MacLaine is a spinsterish woman from New England who has gone to New Zealand to teach the Maoris who are also a Polynesian people.

She is prim and proper and has her set ideas about love and sex. But bachelor school teacher Laurence Harvey gets her mojo going. But he's also an irresponsible drunkard and that part of his behavior repels her. Harvey given where he is has plenty of outlets for his libido.

Jack Hawkins is in this as well as the district education superintendent who first comes across as a stuffy bureaucrat, but turns out to be a very wise man indeed. Nobu McCarthy whose career was peaking at this time played many an Oriental part. This was one of her few non-Oriental, Maoris are Pacific Islanders, parts and she is a teen student of MacLaine. Also black American actor Juano Hernandez plays a Maori chief, another man much wiser than MacLaine.

Not one of Shirley's best, but her fans will like it.

It is interesting to note that this movie, purportedly set in New Zealand, has no one speaking with a New Zealand accent. It is also interesting that the "natives" ( Maori) are all Mexican or Japanese. This film is condescending, inane drivel. What were the likes of Jack Hawkins, Laurence Harvey and Shirley McLain thinking?