High Barbaree (1947)

I like Black Panther, but I didn't like this movie.

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

One of those movie experiences that is so good it makes you realize you've been grading everything else on a curve.

Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

***SPOILERS*** Crash landing their plane in the far out South Pacific during a bombing run on the Japanese fleet the two surviving pilot and navigator Let. Alec Brook & Let. Joe Moore, Van Johnson & Cameron Mitchell, find themselves low on water and on the verge of dying of dehydration if their not found on time. It's during that time in waiting and hoping to be rescued that Alec goes into this long narrative, coupled with an almost hour long flashback, about this mythical island High Barbaree in the South Pacific that his uncle Thad Vail, Thomas Mitchell, always told him about until it came out of his ears. As luck would have it, and Brooke & Moore needed all the luck they can get, that island is supposed to be in the vicinity where their plane, ironically also named "High Barbaree",crash landed!We get to see the life and times as well as loves of young and later grown up Alex Brooke in a number of flashbacks that mostly take place in his hometown Westview Iowa. it was in Westview that Alec met little Nancy Fraser, June Allyson, whom he planned, at the age of 10,to marry when the two grew up. As it turned Nancy and her parents moved to the state of Montana and Alec soon lost track of her. Now, still in flashback, Alec has become the vice president of an aircraft company and is engaged to the boss' classy and beautiful daughter Diana Case, played by the drop dead gorgeous Marilyn Maxwell, when what seems like out of nowhere Nancy, now a navy nurse, pops back into his life! You can just imagine what major complications that brought into poor, in choosing between Nancy & Diana, Alec's life. Saved by the bell or the attack on Pearl Harbor Alec now in the Navy fighting the Japs, and not sitting behind a desk, seemed to have dropped Diana,what a jerk, and is now free to marry his long lost love Nancy! But as things or fate turned out Nancy dropped him in return and is now engaged to marry this navy man that she met while on duty in Honolulu! So where does the mythical island of High Barbaree fit into all this?****SPOILERS**** Well between all the BS that we and Joe go through listening to Alec story about the mythical island of High Barbaree it did served it's purpose in keeping the two clinging to life in hoping they'd find it up until help finally arrived! It's there in a dream sequence at High Barbaree that Alec, Joe by then had died from thirst and high fever, met this smiling Polynesian Chieftain Tangaror, played by native Hawaiian actor Al Kikume, who guided a shocked as well as happy Alec not only onto the island of mystery but to his hometown of Westview Iowa as well! The very predictable ending which shall remain nameless had all the qualities and trappings of your typical and phony Hollywood feel good happy ending! And it was that ending as well as Alec doing the brainless as well as unthinkable by dumping Diana for Nancy , which was like trading in a RollsRoyce for a Volkswagen, that made to film not all that believable to begin, or end, with.

I first saw this film as a young child and then again as a teen. This is my favorite movie of all time. No sex, no violence, no obscenities, just a fantastic comedic-dramatic romance. Van Johnson and June Allyson probably never made a bad movie but this must be their best. Van is handsome, heroic and lovable as a pilot downed at sea reminiscing about his life and love. June is the girlfriend who refuses to believe her love is lost at sea and searches for him. Of course there is a happy ending. This show is not sappy or silly but I guess it would make a first class "chick flick". Guys, you cannot go wrong watching this with a lady. If you see this film I'm sure you'll agree it is as good as or better than other more famous movies. Don't miss this, you're guaranteed to feel good!

Van Johnson and June Allyson head a talented cast in this enchantingly dotty romantic fantasy about true love in peace and war. The romance begins when they're children, and the childhood scenes have some charmingly surreal moments, such as when the two run away to join the circus. Someone must have been reading Freud in his spare time when making this one. There are enough symbols, phallic and otherwise, to fill a fair-sized textbook. Director Jack Conway did an admirable job on the film, with beautifully composed shots which at times recall the best silent pictures. He had flair for investing what are, on the surface, mundane images,--a water tower, a tropical island--with a subliminal power rare in a Hollywood movie. Since much of the story is related in flashback, there's a slight but unmistakable distortion involved in what unfolds on the screen that makes the movie feel at times like a dream. There are strange, abrupt transitions,--a storm comes seemingly out of nowhere--that make the movie resonate in one's memory years after one has seen it. Corny as hell, this is in many respects a remarkable film.

This is just a great movie. Part romance, part Leave it to Beaver, part mystical journey. And part Norman Rockwell, Tom Sawyer, and PT 109 for that matter! It is a very simple story of a downed U.S. Navy flier relating his upbringing and romances to a fellow flier. But it is just so beautifully done and filled with the laughter and tears, triumph and tragedies of life that is is irresistable.