More Tahiti On Celluloid

A T present screening in New Zea- Zealand is a film, The Link, made by Messrs Roger Mirams ind John O’Shea for Tasman Em pire Airways. The film gives shots )f Samoa, Aitutaki, Tahiti and Hoorea and the photography would >e difficult to fault. But it seems >adly put together. It does not de )ict the Coral Route flight—the link” between Sydney and Tahiti — is a traveller would see it. There s constant chopping from one island o another. This may be unnoticed >y the would-be tourist, but for hose who have travelled the route he mixture of shots seems con using.

A recent New York newspaper ;ives a lengthy' review of another [Tahiti film, Tanga Tika, produced, lirected, and photographed by he well-known circumnavigating r achtsman Dwight Long, who will >e remembered by many in his acht Idle Hour twenty years ago.

After that cruise, Long joined the Lmerican explorer Martin Johnson ,s a cameraman during an expedi ion to the hinterland of Malaya, jater, Long wrote another book, leven Seas on a Shoe String a ollow-up on his earlier book Sail ng All Seas in the Idle Hour. That Bad to an extensive lecture tour n the States, until World War 11. jong then became a cameraman in he US Navy—eventually directing he film, The Fighting Lady, the life

of an aircraft carrier, which won an Academy Award, and prompted Mr. Roosevelt to decorate Long, who then had the rank of Lieu tenant-Commander.

The war over, Long was in Holly wood as a cameraman. Then, un able to obtain financial support for a film of Tahiti which he had long wanted to make, he went to Tahiti in 1949 with his own equipment and an original story. Helped by the late James Norman Hall and by Mrs. Hall, he commenced work. The male lead was played by Paul Meoe, and the female lead by Adeline Tetahamaue, both of Tahiti. To sign the girl, Long says, he had to pay her father a bonus of a set of tyres for a 1926 Buick and a short wave radio —in addition, of course, to the girl’s salary. After a year, his funds were exhausted and the film only half complete. He re turned to the States, showed what he had taken to some likely back ers, and was able to return in 1951 for another year.

The final result had its preview in September this year, and will be awaited in the Islands. The characters in the story are all played by local people.

Our Tahiti correspondent also re ports that film star Jon Hall, whose uncle, Emile Martin, is one of Tahiti’s most wealthy business men, will be going to Tahiti in January with a group of actors to film yet another “nature in the raw” film to be entitled, Storm Over Tahiti.

Jon seems to have been through more Hollywood hurricanes in his career than a South Seas skipper would see in several life-times. His mother, born in Tahiti, was a daughter of the famous Lovaina Chapman who operated the long demolished Tiare Hotel publicised in Frederick O’Brien’s books.

This film is likely to be more in the Hollywood tradition than Dwight Long’s effort.