Wonderful character development!

hyped garbage

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

Yo, there's no way for me to review this film without saying, take your *insert ethnicity + "ass" here* to see this film,like now. You have to see it in order to know what you're really messing with.

I have a lot of complaints about this movie yet I enjoyed it immensely and am glad I watched it, mainly inspired by the jazz standard based on the main motif of its score, which is excellent by the way. Recommended to all fans of the Golden Age despite the following quibbles.1. Length: 2 hours 21 minutes is on the long side and I was planning to watch the DVD in two installments but got so engrossed I watched it in one sitting and could have sat through more.2. Religiosity: There is a religious theme which may not appeal to some, like me for instance. However, it isn't hammered at you and doesn't take up too much of the running time, and there are many classics whose philosophy you or I may not agree with. If you're a devout Catholic you'll really love this movie.3. Colonialism: Much of it is set during the Maori wars, when the New Zealand natives fought back against the intruders who took their ancestral lands, who of course are the protagonists. At least the Maoris (not acted by real Maoris, needless to say), although seen as a threat, are portrayed somewhat sympathetically. Of course a similar problem exists in many classic Westerns, and you can't change history.4. Accents: All the main characters are English, as is the supporting cast, but the four leads are played by Americans, of whom only Hart makes much of a stab at sounding English. Heflin in particular sounds aggressively Midwestern. On the other hand, he kind of steals the picture in a strong performance as the most sympathetic character. Oh well, we're used to Cary Grant and Arnold Schwarzenegger playing Americans.5. Lana Turner: I'm not a Lana Turner basher. In fact I think she was great in several movies. However, in the original novel the plot hinges on a wealthy merchant having two daughters, one beautiful and the other brainy but plain, and one of the heroes getting the wrong (not beautiful) one sent from England to New Zealand for him to wed due to a misunderstanding, back when that was a six-month sea voyage. Now, we know MGM wasn't going to cast someone actually ugly as the bride, but it muddles things to cast one of the most beautiful women in Hollywood in the role. It strains credulity that a guy on a remote plantation in 1860s New Zealand would give the cold shoulder to Lana Turner, clever and nuts about him to boot.6: Black-and-white: Why didn't MGM film this big-money blockbuster, with spectacular scenery and special effects, in Technicolor? I have nothing against black-and-white movies, but this one screams for color. I never thought I'd say this, but I wouldn't mind seeing Ted Turner or someone take a whack at colorizing this one.

Nice catchy musical theme, above average special effects during earthquake scene. Story familiar.Two beautiful sisters (Turner and Reed) belong to the richest family on St. Pierre. Turner is materialistic, manipulative, and Donna Reed is warm and pure. They're both interested in the young and handsome Richard Hart but he comes from a lower class. Turner doesn't care about that. She can kick him around until he becomes rich. Reed just plain doesn't care.Now, no story like this can get by for very long without periodic tragedies, preferably equidistant from one another in the plot line. Bingo. We meet three elderly people. I reckoned only one of them to be toast, but no. In an excess of misery, all three give up the ghost. There's another death, the lovable and outspoken Captain O'Hara, of the clipper Green Dolphin, but his demise is saved for much later and is mentioned in passing, an amuse-bouche of a death.The hero, Hart, is not exactly flawless. He gets in trouble and flees the Chanel Islands to exotic New Zealand. If Hart is lower class, the Maoris we see are even lower. They fall into two types: the compliant, hard working lumberjacks and the nasty tribe from the north who are probably cannibals, never having enjoyed the benefits of the enlightenment that comes with civilization, like Christianity and slavery. Hart joins the lumber company of the buckskin-clad Van Heflin, also a refugee from St. Pierre, who has loved Turner from afar since childhood. We feel his pain.Hart write a letter from New Zealand to Donna Reed, confessing his love and asking her to join him in marriage and live in the boondocks. But, inebriated, he addresses the letter to Turner instead of Reed, driving Reed to a nunnery perched on a hill that looks like Mount St. Michel.Turner, of course, joins him and, in Hart's absence, must give birth while their primitive hut is shaking and falling down around her. Births are never easy in these kinds of movies. Fortunately, Van Heflin is in attendance and asks Turner to trust him because he knows what he's doing. He never claims that he "don't know nothing about birthing babies." Well, why go on with it. It fits a formula. It's a sprawling drama of mixed loves and adventures in an exotic setting. As in a Russian novel, everybody seems to marry the wrong person. It induces a Niagara of tears. I cried like a baby and found myself sobbing, "Let it end; let it END." It finally ended. It must have, because when I woke up it was over. I vaguely remember seeing it as a child and found the earthquake thrilling. I still do.

. . . would fall on deaf ears when Laurence Olivier said it to Ophelia a year later as HAMLET, but it does the trick in GREEN DOLPHIN STREET--even if it's not said in so many words. Winning an Oscar for best "special effects" is the aspect of this film that is the most laughable today. Though film makers had been pointing their cameras toward REAL earthquakes since at least 1906, when you watch the "New Zealand" quake scenes in GREEN DOLPHIN STREET you get the idea that the effects people here had NOTHING to go on in their depictions; that quakes were just a faint rumor from a distant planet. Toppling trees, yawning chasms every few feet, and MINUTES of continuous shaking--oh my! Everyone would be climbing rocky Jacob's Ladders like "Marguerite" to reach the safety of mountaintop monasteries and convents if GREEN DOLPHIN's effects were even half accurate. On the other hand, the lessons of love this movie teaches are as solid today as they were 67 years ago, or in the mid-1800s, when this story is set. Though it's sad that Timothy "Tyharuru" Haslam (Van Heflin) is the odd man out here, this is really a story more about the ladies, anyway.

As the cliché goes, the book is so much better than the movie.That having been said, it's a great story, and the film acting is excellent according to the standards of the 1940s.I've wondered why such a bland actor was cast in the lead. He's supposed to be a weak character, but surely MGM had roster of highly skilled actors who could convincingly PLAY weak.Unfortunately, some of those lines in the script are just unactable. Despite the talent on screen, they make you want to gag.Nevertheless, there's some dynamic drama, and those special effects are spectacular, even today.The evocative, romantic theme music was made into a song, "On Green Dolphin Street," which has become one the most frequently played tunes in the jazz repertoire.