Donovan's Reef

A small island in the Pacific. Three Americans stayed on after the war: Donovan runs a bar, Gilhooley turns up every year on his birthday to fight him, and the doctor Dedham has opened a clinic. Dedham has three children on the island; their mother was a local woman and she died. Then a woman arrives from Boston: the daughter he left in America, come to assess him for an inheritance. The islanders decide to hide the situation from her. John Ford directs. John Wayne plays Donovan, Lee Marvin plays Gilhooley and Jack Warden plays the doctor. It is among the last films Ford and Wayne made together, and the register is entirely comic; the brawls are funny and the plot is light. Behind it stands a matter Ford worked at constantly: mixed families not being accepted by society. The doctor's children are hidden from the family in Boston, and the film takes that shame directly as its subject. The island is built as an escape; the men who did not go home from the war have made their own order there. It was shot on location in Hawaii and the colour is the most vivid of Ford's late films. Its limit is how it looks now; the representation of the islanders and the sense of humour belong to its period and some passages have dated. Who it is for: viewers who like John Ford and classic Hollywood comedy. Who it is not for: the plot is weak, the humour is of its time, and the narrative passes over a serious matter lightly.