Le seigneur d'Hawaï

The people are pretty. The scenery is spectacular. What more do you want?

A good film, Macbeth and Romeo-Juliet in a Hawaiian setting. Credible performances, but this film could have been shot in California or mostly on a soundstage. It deserves better than a 4.5 of 10 but surely not more than a 7. A poignant social, cultural commentary on Hawaii becoming a State in mid-Twentieth century.

An overwrought, overcooked screen-adaptation of Peter Gilman's book by screenwriter Marguerite Roberts concerning a politician and land baron in Hawaii who is having an affair with a native girl--yet who butts heads with his own sister over her affair with an island boy! Somewhat stilted soaper from director Guy Green is occasionally funny unintentionally. Despite a good cast (including Charlton Heston, Yvette Mimieux, and James Darren), the characters themselves aren't a very likable lot, and the plot-developments are eventually stagnated by Roberts and Green's lack of inspiration and invention. There was potential here for a really strong melodrama, but it goes unrealized. The Hawaiian locales are certainly nice compensation, as is Johnny Williams' rousing score. **1/2 from ****

The first thing that hit me about this movie was an appreciation of the wide screens and bright colours that prevailed in movies of that era. Hawaii looks great here. On a large screen, that alone would have been worth the price of admission.

As for that other stuff, cast, acting, directing, story, dialogue, etc. Well, this is a soap opera and don't expect too much more except that the plot angles focus on race, ethnic relations and class and this gives them a bit more substance than some other soap operas such "The Picnic" or "Portrait in Black". At the time, it probably skated the line between being edgy enough to intrigue the audience but not so controversial to be scandalous. Today, it comes across as pretty mild although the issues themselves have certainly not disappeared.

Nothing and no one is either brilliant or terrible although Philip Ahn's small part is excellent and produces a strong moment. Heston has his huge screen presence but this is not one of his classic roles. There is not enough there for it to possibly become that. Mimieux looks great and her role is as essential as Heston's and is a soap opera archetype. Nuyen also looks great and, as usual for her in the 60s, melancholy.

I wonder if the late J. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina ever saw this film. He would have understood the character of Charlton Heston in this movie as few others are capable of. As we all know, several years after Thurmond's death in 2003 at 101, a black woman who was his illegitimate daughter came out with a book about the South's long standing segregationist and Dixiecrat candidate for president in 1948.

The film is set in Hawaii in 1959 just upon Hawaii's admission as a state and Charlton Heston comes from a family not unlike the Parkers who still have a ranch on Hawaii's big island that takes a lot acreage there and is the state Ponderosa. Heston's being touted as someone who could be one of their first two US Senators. He's a widower whose wife and son were killed years ago in the famous tidal wave at Hilo and lives at the ranch with his wife's sister Elizabeth Allan and his sister Yvette Mimieux.

Having visited Hawaii for a glorious week I can speak to Hawaii's reputation for tolerance, but even paradise will have a few racial trolls. Even though he's got a Eurasian mistress, France Nuyen of long standing whom he's just put in a family way, he objects mightily to the proposed interracial marriage of native Hawaiian James Darren and Mimieux. When his objections become the underlying cause of tragedy, Heston's political career is shot to pieces. What might fly in Alabama has no place in Hawaii.

During his career Heston also played Thomas Jefferson which came out the same year as Diamond Head. I'm wondering if he didn't channel some of Jefferson into playing 'King' Howland who had a well known backstairs interracial relationship with Sally Hemmings. If Patsy or Polly Jefferson had ever come to father and said they were going to marry some free black man, I imagine Jefferson would have reacted the same way as Heston does with Mimieux.

Diamond Head is a nice Hawaiian soap opera which could have made some great prime time Dynasty like viewing with a pineapple twist. But it fails utterly in conveying any serious message about racial tolerance. Still you can't shoot a bad looking film on Hawaii and since the cast shot it on location, they're all ahead of the game if they got to spend time on the islands. Charlton Heston even got to do it again several years later in The Hawaiians.

Besides those I've mentioned look for George Chakiris as Darren's half brother, Aline McMahon as their mom and Philip Ahn as a most efficient police inspector. What I liked about what Ahn did with the part is that it could have been played like Charlie Chan and it wasn't.

You can never go wrong with a Hawaiian based film. Even the worst films are never bad looking and Diamond Head is far from the worst.