South Sea Woman (1953)

The greatest movie ever made..!

Lack of good storyline.

Horrible, fascist and poorly acted

It's a mild crowd pleaser for people who are exhausted by blockbusters.

In 1944 U.S. Marine Master Gunnery Sergeant James O'Hearn is facing a court martial for desertion, theft, scandalous conduct and destruction of property, charges which in time of war carry the death penalty. ("Scandalous conduct" in this context means sex outside marriage; if that were to be regarded as a capital offence under military law I suspect that the fighting strength of most of the world's armies would be drastically reduced overnight). The above might suggest that this is a serious courtroom drama along the lines of "The Caine Mutiny". Admittedly, the film starts off in serious vein, but as soon as Ginger Martin (she with whom O'Hearn allegedly conducted himself scandalously) takes the stand seriousness goes out of the window and it descends into ridiculous comedy.Ginger is presumably the "South Sea Woman" of the title, but she is actually a white American rather than a Polynesian and only finds herself in the South Seas by chance. When O'Hearn first meets her she is working as a showgirl at a nightclub in Shanghai, where his regiment is stationed, and is the girlfriend of his friend Private Davy White. An attempt by White to slip away to marry Ginger leads to the three finding themselves adrift at sea on a small motor boat. In a series of increasingly farcical misadventures, in the course of which they inadvertently commit the acts which will form the basis of the charges against O'Hearn, they are rescued by a Chinese junk and eventually cast away on the French-ruled island of Namou. As the Governor of Namou is pro-Vichy, and as the attack on Pearl Harbor has now brought America into the war, the two Marines have to pretend to be deserters in order to avoid being interned. White and Ginger attempt to marry several times, but are always frustrated. It is at this point that the film changes direction again, largely abandoning comedy and turning into a patriotic wartime adventure as O'Hearn and White discover a fiendish Nazi plot and decide to take action to thwart it, to seize a boat and to rejoin the Marines who are fighting the Japanese at Guadalcanal. Mixing genres in this way is often a risky business, the risk being that the resulting film can end up as neither fish nor flesh nor fowl nor good red herring, or in this case neither drama nor comedy nor action. I don't think there was ever any possibility of this film being a sort of "Caine Mutiny Court Martial", but it could certainly have been made either as a comedy about the adventures of a pair of bungling Marines and a girl or as a standard gung-ho action war film about two heroic Marines with a sub-plot about their love-interest. The attempt to make the film as a combination of these two approaches simply results in a misbegotten dog's breakfast, a film which is not very amusing when it tries to be a comedy and not very exciting when it tries to be a wartime adventure. About all one can say for it is that Virginia Mayo looks lovely, as she normally did. This is not quite Burt Lancaster's worst movie; he normally saved his worst for those occasions, mostly in the sixties and seventies, when he allowed his political judgement to overcome his artistic judgement and ended up playing a villainous right-wing fanatic in turgid, paranoid left-wing thrillers like "Executive Action" or "The Cassandra Crossing". It is not, however, one of his better ones, and is one that is probably best forgotten by all but the most obsessive Lancaster fans. 4/10

Not very funny for a movie labeled as a comedy. Sergeant Major O'Hearn is being court martialed for desertion. After all he was AWOL for nine months.Chuck Connors plays a PFC hero. He has the Silver Star and the Navy Cross before the film even starts. He dies when he climbs a Jap ship's stack and throws some TNT down it. This blows up the ship and Connors. Burt Lancaster is O'Hearn. He refuses to testify until the he must to clear the record about Connors being a deserter. Then everything comes out in the open. It is still not very funny. Virginia Mayo is the love interest, first of Connors and then of Lancaster. Her testimony starts things in motion which leads to O'Hearns deciding to testify. This movie is well acted and well written but it is not comedy by any stretch of the imagination.

In a recent biography of Burt Lancaster the only two things that were mentioned about South Sea Woman was that it enabled him to fulfill a commitment to Warner Brothers on a three picture deal and that he was instrumental in getting Chuck Connors the part of his fellow Marine in hijinks. Other than that this one is strictly minor league Lancaster.The title role of South Sea Woman is played by Virginia Mayo who the two have a rivalry over. The story is narrated from several perspectives at a court martial that Lancaster is undergoing. These two manage to miss the withdrawal of Marines from Shanghai which occurred a few weeks before Pearl Harbor. Lancaster wants to get back to the outfit especially when they get news of the Japanese attack, but Connors has Mayo on his mind, he wants to get married.Not since the Errol Flynn film Desperate Journey also by Warner Brothers was there ever a more lighthearted approach to war. These two guys also manage to liberate a Vichy governed French colony and turn it over to the Free French and from said island recruit a crew to get to Guadalcanal where they do distinguish themselves in their own private action. All this related to a rather incredulous court martial board. What was interesting was that Burt Lancaster did two films at once. While this was shooting Lancaster went over to the set of Three Sailors And A Girl and did a small walk-on role in his Marine uniform costume in that musical. With that he fulfilled a three picture commitment the other being The Flame And The Arrow in which he also co-starred with Virginia Mayo. The comedy was kind of forced and while it had a few laughs in it South Sea Woman is clearly a film that Lancaster wanted to get off his plate and move on. That year of 1953 he also did From Here To Eternity a much better film about the start of the Pacific War.

In 1942, Burt Lancaster, as Marine Sgt. James O'Hearn, is being court-marshaled for various offenses, including desertion and sinking a saloon. He stand firmly mute while various witnesses testify in such a way that he looks bad. Finally, when his friend's honor (Chuck Connors) is called into question, he decides to speak for himself at the trial."Foist," he explains, "we busted into that stinkin' Portagee dungeon and let them Free Frenchies go." The story is that he and his buddy, Connors, were left behind with Ginger, a saloon girl, (Virginia Mayo), when the Marines evacuated Shanghai. (I thought that was in 1939, not 1941, but let it go.) By a curious juxtaposition of events the trio wind up on a small, studio-bound South Sea Island called Namur, run by the Fascist-friendly Vichy French. They claim to be deserters in order to stay out of prison, and they are housed in the "hotel" run by a French woman and her "three lovely nieces." All of whom Lancaster seduces, while Connors is glued to Virginia Mayo, making goo-goo eyes at her and planning for a revolting event called "marriage." Lots of comedy as Lancaster and Connors -- in real life, both Irish athletes from New York City -- bop and deceive one another. Virginia Mayo's growing attraction to Lancaster only intensifies the rivalry.But that's nothing compared to the fight they initiate against the "Krauts" and the "Japs". They manage to sink a fleet of Japanese barges on their way to Guadalcanal, and even a Japanese destroyer, at the cost of Connors' life.Not much sense in going on about the plot. It's mostly comedic. The two tough Marines have to dress in frilly nighties while their uniforms are being pressed, for instance. As a comedy, this is pretty basic, and the absence of subtlety is notable but not necessarily regretted. There's plenty of action too, which I won't bother to spell out.Lancaster grins and shows off his mouthful of chicklets. Connors seems made of some iron alloy. (The two men couldn't be more different in their political attitudes off the screen.) Virginia Mayo is stuck in the role of a perambulating floozy, and yet it may be her most animated performance on screen. One can imagine the director yelling at her, "More, MORE!" And she delivers.It was made by the Warner Brothers. It could have been made by the Warner Brothers in 1939 instead of 1951, with Jimmy Cagney in the Lancaster role and some nobody in Connors' role. Man -- it moves FAST.What a lot of fun.