Tahiti In Fiction And Film

O ver the years, Tahiti and        good and evil, and the film won    Polynesia have provided         an Oscar for Best Picture in       novelists and moviemakers       1935.                              with colorful subject matter.                                            Early travelers told of wanton        A generation later Marlon Brando   women on tropical shores, and         flew down to Tahiti to star in a   Fletcher Christian added drama to     blockbuster remake of Mutiny on    the plot by leading a mutiny          the Bounty. MGM's 1962 production  against the tyrannical Captain        is still considered the most       Bligh.                                spectacular film ever made in the                                        South Pacific, in part due to the  In 1934 American writers Charles      glorious scenery of Tahiti and     Nordhoff and James Norman Hall        Bora Bora. Thousands of Tahitian   brought out the Bounty Trilogy.       extras appeared in the film, and   This three-part novel deals with      Brando married his first lady,     Christian's mutiny on the Bounty,     Tarita Teriipaia.                  the escape of Bligh and his loyal                                        crew members to Dutch Timor, and      In 1984, yet another version of    the colonization of Pitcairn          The Bounty was released, with Sir  Island by Christian and his           Anthony Hopkins as a resolute      fellow mutineers.                     Bligh and Mel Gibson as an                                               ambiguous Christian. Of the three  The novel was an instant              Bounty films, this is probably     bestseller, and director Frank        the most historically accurate,    Lloyd soon made it into a movie,      and it's certainly the one with    Mutiny on the Bounty, starring        the greatest psychological depth.  Charles Laughton and Clark Gable.     It was largely filmed in Moorea's  In keeping with the mood of his       Opunohu Bay.                       time, the mutiny was presented as                                        a simplistic struggle between         Another Nordhoff and Hall novel,   The Hurricane, has been brought       French colonial life provided      to the silver screen twice. John      Maugham with a pretext to explore  Hall's 1937 film portrays a young     the role of the artist in          couple fleeing a despotic             society. Another famous Maugham    governor. In 1978 Dino de             story, Rain, set in Samoa, has     Laurentiis reshot The Hurricane       been made into a movie several     on Bora Bora, with Mia Farrow and     times.                             Trevor Howard. The resort built                                          to house de Laurentiis' crew          Other well-known authors who have  still exists as the Sofitel           popularized the legend of Tahiti   Marara.                               include Herman Melville, Pierre                                          Loti, Robert Louis Stevenson,      British novelist W. Somerset          Jack London, Rupert Brooke, and    Maugham also had close ties to        James A. Michener. Their stories,  the South Pacific. In 1943 Albert     plays, and films have helped       Lewin filmed The Moon and             create the myth of a South Seas    Sixpence, Maugham's fictionalized     paradise. And even today, Tahiti   account of Paul Gauguin's life in     and Polynesia beckon to romantics  Polynesia. The nonconformist          wishing to live their share of     painter's incompatibility with        the dream.                         About the Author: David Stanley is the author of Moon Handbooks Tahiti http://www.southpacific.org/tahiti.html His online travel guide to Tahiti and French Polynesia may be perused at http://www.southpacific.org/text/finding_tahiti.html and his Tahiti travel photos are at http://www.pacific-pictures.com/tahiti/ Source: www.isnare.com