Review of The Hawaiians

Based on the later chapters of James A. Michener's book "Hawaii", made into a film in 1966, opens with a new generation of characters circa 1870, with Americans bringing Chinese servants to Hawaii by ship. The sea captain (Charlton Heston, the black sheep of his family!) returns home to his woman who informs him his grandfather has died, leaving the family shipping lines to a cousin. The captain isn't pleased with what he has inherited--"a worthless piece of land"--however, in two years he strikes water and starts a pineapple plantation with help from a servant (Mako) and his concubine, Nyuk Tsin (Tina Chen), a fast-learning girl with a talent for gardening and with pre-feminist leanings. The servant already has a wife back in his native country, yet he and Nyuk Tsin have five sons and a daughter before he contracts leprosy and is shipped off to a leper colony on Molokai. Meanwhile, the captain's wife bears him a son before apparently going mad (she's repulsed by his touch, which isn't necessarily the same thing). Mammoth undertaking by screenwriter James R. Webb, who introduces and then disposes of characters in quick succession, with the years in-between the tragedies flashing by at a rapid rate. It may have been all too much for director Tom Gries to handle; the acting is uneven, the tone of the movie is often uncertain, and the last-act where the babies have now become adults and revolution breaks out under the dictatorship of a new queen (Naomi Stevens!) is akin to soap opera. Heston, Mako and Chen are the only performers who manage to create genuine characters, with Chen's return home to her long-estranged children the film's most moving sequence. Henry Mancini's flavorful score starts the picture on the right note, while cinematographers Lucien Ballard (who left the project ill) and Philip Lathrop give the Kauai and Maui locations a fine visual texture. ** from ****