Pagan Love Song (1950)

(On Cable TV, June 2022) As I’m wrapping up my filmography of legendary musicals produced by Arthur Freed, my overriding question is simple – why are those the last few entries? What explains that they’re not as often broadcast as Freed’s other hits? In Pagan Love Song, the answer is inappropriate casting (a chemically-tanned Esther William as a half-Tahitian girl, and the otherwise awesome Rita Moreno as a full Tahitian), far too much stereotypical exoticism, middling songs and humdrum execution. The story, as slight as it is, has a white American travelling to Tahiti to claim an inherited property, mistaking the heroine for a non-English speaker, and getting seduced by the island’s way of life. It’s not terrible, but much of the film’s interest consists in watching the result and wondering how bad it’s going to be in terms of native representation. To be fair, the colour location cinematography (in Kauai) does have its moments, and a few numbers are rather fun (most notably “The House of Singing Bamboo”). But the rest? Howard Keel is blandly bland man as the lead, while Williams’s performance feels perfunctory (she nearly drowned for such an ordinary role) and Pagan Love Song becomes increasingly nonsensical toward the end. The atmosphere can’t overcome the film’s more fundamental flaws, and the result, well, is almost deservedly forgotten today despite its big-budget production.