Review of The Hurricane

The Hurricane, John Ford's masterful film of 1937 is rightly remembered as one of the best disaster films of all time. It stands head above shoulders over should such miserable cinematic fare like CBS's ludicrous Category 7: Day of Destruction. For one thing, the hurricane in The Hurricane is not the focus of the story but its climax. Ford spends most of the movies developing the main characters of Terangi and Murama (played by Jon Hall and Dorothy Lamour respective) and their lives on the fictional South Pacific island of Manukura in French Polynesia. John Ford spends his time as any good story teller does in presenting sympathetic and unsympathetic characters (such as Raymond Massey's governor, Eugene De Laage and John Carradine's sadistic warden)and shows the obstacles that face these characters before leading up to the climatic hurricane of the movie title. Such patient work by Ford on his characters pays off in the climax of the movie when the hurricane hits. We, the viewers, care about the death of the people so affected. I found myself riveted by the climax, appalled at the death and destruction, as one should be by any disaster. Unlike Category 7, there is no temptation at all to laugh because Ford ultimately wasn't interested in special effects but in people and their effective characterization.