Well, fans of James Michener that missed the 1990 laserdisc can now see the Road Show version of George Roy Hill’s Hawaii as an extra on this new Blu-ray. It’ll still be the old low-res NTSC transfer, however. The HD encoding of this big 1966 show is the shorter, general release version.
Michener’s sprawling saga of the history of our 50th state is woefully unsuited to film adaptation, and it’s to the credit of producer Walter Mirisch that such an intelligent and uncompromising picture resulted. Hawaii was a substantial hit, which says a lot for a film where uplifting moments are outnumbered four to one by scenes of misery and sadness. The performances are commendable and George Roy Hill’s direction avoids decorative travelogue effects. The script by Dalton Trumbo and Daniel Taradash has an uncommonly fair attitude toward the destruction of an idyllic culture by zealous missionaries and rapacious whalers. The only preaching comes from the main character, a Calvinist from New England.
The adaptation takes on only a section of the epic novel. Freshly schooled New England seminary student Abner Hale (Max von Sydow) has volunteered to go to Hawaii, but the stern Rev. Thorn (Torin Thatcher) will not dispatch unmarried missionaries. Thorn arranges for Hale to meet young Jerusha Bromley. Jerusha believes that her handsome suitor whaler Rafer Hoxworth (Richard Harris) has abandoned her, when Thorn and her mother have been intercepting his letters. Jerusha marries Abner and they set sail for the South Seas in the company of other missionaries including islander Keoki (Manu Tupou) and Rev. John Whipple (Gene Hackman), a doctor. After a treacherous passage around the Horn the ship arrives at the island of Maui, where Abner and Jerusha meet Queen Malama (Jocelyne LaGarde). The queen takes to Jerusha immediately and eventually opts to become a Christian. But Abner is ruthless about forcing the natives away from their heathen practices. Some of the changes, like restraining whalers from sleeping with the native girls, are obviously for the good. But Abner is also set on destroying all vestiges of the rich Hawaiian culture and religion.
The years bring change but not happiness. Other missionaries drop out, buy land and go into business. Sicknesses decimate the native population. Abner’s bitter intolerance drives away those who love him. And there’s still Rafer Hoxworth to contend with. On each of his visits he begs Jerusha to come away with him, before the harsh life in the islands kills her.
Hawaii’s only nod to commercial concerns is the casting of the magic name Julie Andrews. After Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music almost any project with Andrews’ name attached could get funding, freeing Mirisch and his writers to tell Michener’s story without the compromise of a happy ending.
Trumbo and Taradash’s screenplay covers roughly the first third of the book, from the arrival of the missionaries to the end of Hawaii as a distinct tribal nation. The well-intentioned Christians aren’t even off the boat before the severe and monomaniacal Abner Hale offends the ruling Queen Malama with his blunt demands. He wants the killing of deformed babies stopped and sex to be regulated along puritan lines. Free love must cease, especially incest in the royal bloodline. He’s determined to stop the sexual welcome given whaling ships.
Maui is a functioning matriarchy, which riles the stiff-necked Abner. Jerusha’s rapport with Malama paves the way for Abner’s first success. By convincing the Queen that the missionaries have no desire for Hawaiian land, Abner and Jerusha make a convert, at least in spirit.
But the rest of their efforts have painful results. Abner’s intransigence and bigotry alienate his native missionary ‘brother’ Keoki, who eventually reverts to the old ways and weds his sister. When the whalers are prevented from sleeping with the young island women, they retaliate by attacking Abner’s church. Rebuffed in his efforts to run off with Jerusha, whaler Richard Harris thinks nothing of seducing her housemaid Iliki (Lokelani S. Chicarelli) and whisking her away on his ship, to be used and then abandoned in some foreign port.
The missionaries are corrupted as well. Discharged from the sect for taking a native bride, one widower is followed by others grown contemptuous of the church hypocrisy. Ex-minister John Whipple starts a lucrative business. Having already robbed the Hawaiians of their religion, the missionaries become part of the systematic theft of the islands themselves.
The later chapters cover the island’s last days as an Eden-like paradise. Abner Hale’s stern teachings make Malama and her loving husband/brother Kelolo (Ted Nobriga) feel like guilty sinners. The deformed children validate the warnings against incest, but when an outbreak of measles decimates the native population even Abner opens his mind to Jerusha’s admonition that the islanders deserve something better than the God of fire and brimstone.
Faithful to his principles, Abner refuses to grow wealthy with the other ministers and is shunted aside, alone. But he’s helped by a grown islander with a facial birthmark who, as it turns out, was one of the ‘unfit’ babies that he and Jerusha saved from drowning years before.
Max Von Sydow is excellent as the preacher utterly blind to the natural beauty of a culture he cannot understand. He’s unerringly true to his nature, as in the painful scene where he avows his complete love to Jerusha, only to qualify the statement with an apology for placing his love for her above the love of God. The character is a frustration for viewers but the necessary center of this difficult story. Frankly, that the Abner character’s harsh edges were not removed is a major credit to producer Mirisch. A more feel-good Hawaii could surely have been a much bigger hit.
Julie Andrews brings needed vitality and heart to the movie; her scenes with Jocelyne LaGarde are the film’s best. Jerusha is supposed to be physically frail, the one aspect of the character that Andrews has difficulty projecting. Richard Harris holds down his end of the romantic triangle as Jerusha’s first love, representing the more romantic life she might have lived had her mother and the missionary director not interfered. Hawaii is not very kind to the Christian life, as its policies destroy foreign cultures and blight the lives of its own faithful innocents.
It would be difficult to film on Hawaiian locations without coming up with breathtaking images, so it’s no surprise that Hawaii was nominated for Best Cinematography. It lost to A Man for All Seasons. The New England scenes are also impressive, as are the Oscar-nominated special effects of the ship passage in a violent storm. The flashier Fantastic Voyage picked up that award.
In interview material for the film Get Shorty, Gene Hackman confirmed that Bette Midler worked as a child extra in the film, and was an irrepressible little performer who often sang on the bus to and from location.
