Movie night: "White Shadows in the South Seas" & "Fig Leaves"

White Shadows in the South Seas: a 1928 MGM movie (part silent and part talkie) inspired by Frederick O'Brien's book of the same name. (That it mixes source material is evident from the name "Fayaway" given to its female protagonist.) The film won the 1930 Academy Award for Best Cinematography, and features an almost-all supporting cast of Tahitian islanders, with only a few featured actors coming from Hollywood.

The story presents Dr. Matthew Lloyd (Monte Blue) living adrift on a Polynesian island. After witnessing the appalling exploitation of the natives by the pearl traders there, he fights back against their industrialized greed and cultural destruction.

One tagline advertised: "Desperate pearl pirates.... thrilling struggles in the ocean's depths.... and a romance of romances played against a setting of whispering palms and blue lagoons.... A film wonder, two years in the making, from the novel sensation!"

Runtime: 1h 28m

Fig Leaves: a 1926 Fox Film Corporation silent comedy written, produced and directed by Howard Hawks. As Hawks's second film, it shows the gestation of a distinctive style and set of themes that would come to be known as "Hawksian."

The story begins in the Garden of Eden with the primordial Adam and Eve (George O'Brien and Olive Borden, respectively) living, Flintstones-like, among dinosaurs and proto-technological conveniences. It then flashes forward to the (then-contemporary) Roaring 1920's, where the pseudo-timeless tale continues in a haute couture setting. According to one tagline: "It's 6000 years since EVE and still women have nothing to wear!"

The film features two fashion show sequences (originally presented in the splendor of early Technicolor, but which now only survive in black-and-white) and designer wardrobes reportedly costing more than $50,000 to make (about $1.2m in 2024).

Runtime: 1h 10m

This meetup will consist of a live viewing, accompanied by discussion and analysis.

Double feature:

• White Shadows in the South Seas 1h 25m
• Fig Leaves 1h 11m

This meetup is part of a series on Fig Leaves and Fancy Pants.