Live Life Team
Genre: Musical
Director: Joshua Logan
Starring Cast: Rossano Brazzi, John Kerr, Mitzi Gaynor, Ray Walston
The year is 1943; the place is the Solomon Islands in the South Pacific. The US armed forces want to set up a naval base in readiness for the invasion of New Guinea which is held by the Japanese. For this, they need the help of French plantation owner Emile de Becque (Brazzi). Nurse Nellie Forbush (Gaynor) and Becque have become very close, but she refuses to marry him because he has children by a Polynesian woman (now dead). Lt Joseph Cable (Kerr) is also on the islands on a dangerous mission. He has met and fallen for a Polynesian girl, Liat, but he has difficulty proposing because of her ethnic background. Lots of difficult decisions must be made in this war ravaged time.
Joshua Logan (Director) cast a wide net when looking for Nellie; Elizabeth Taylor, Audrey Hepburn and Doris Day were all considered, but Mitzi Gaynor did the best screen test. The films cinematography was Oscar nominated for the excellence of the work and also for a cleverly devised colour camera filters, whereby various scenes could be tinted in the colours that portrayed specific moods. The famous score included songs like, “Some Enchanted Evening”, “Younger than Springtime”, “There is Nothing Like a Dame”, and “Bali Hai”. South Pacific is comfortably one of the best Wartime Musicals of its genre, and one not to be missed.
