My mother had the soundtrack for “South Pacific” on a record in our home, and we listened to the music over and over again. It wasn’t until I was a little bit older, though, that I saw the movie and began to appreciate all that this film represents.
A World War II movie, it takes place in the Solomon Islands in the South Pacific during the year 1943. The Navy has a base there, and they’re awaiting their orders. Before they can take action, they need to enlist a spy to watch for Japanese troop movements. Their ideal man would be someone who spoke the language of the natives, who knew the islands well, and was sympathetic to the cause of the U.S. Emile de Becque (Rossano Brazzi)a French plantation owner who has long since made his home on the island, seems the perfect choice, and as he has made friends with head nurse Nellie Forbush (Mitzie Gaynor), it seems she would be the perfect person to ask him to come down to the base and discuss the matter with the commanding officer.
Emile invites Nellie to his estate for lunch, and while there, she discovers that the attraction she first felt for him is growing stronger by the minute. But then she also discovers that Emile has two children, and while his wife is dead, this still presents a problem – his wife was a native of the islands, and so Emile’s children are half-native.
This introduces a serious tone to the story. Up until now, we’ve seen comedy and a little bit of romance, but when the question of prejudice is raised, we come to realize that the war was a difficult time for everyone. Nellie was sent to help the men recover from wounds they got from the Japanese, and now she’s falling for a man who has children that are also of a different race than herself. She hates how she feels, but she does feel prejudiced.
In the meantime, the peddler woman Bloody Mary has come to the base with a boat full of wares. Her island home, Bali Hai, is full of such wonders as elephant tusks and the like, and she badly wants the new lieutenant, Joseph Cable, to come take a look. What she doesn’t tell him is that she sees in him a son-in-law, married to her daughter, Liat. Cable provides the counter balance to this story as he falls in love with Liat, and he sings a song that to me is the essence of the movie. It’s called “You’ve Got To Be Carefully Taught,” and the lyrics are:
You’ve got to be taught
To hate and fear,
You’ve got to be taught
From year to year,
It’s got to be drummed
In your dear little ear
You’ve got to be carefully taught.
You’ve got to be taught to be afraid
Of people whose eyes are oddly made,
And people whose skin is a diff’rent shade,
You’ve got to be carefully taught.
You’ve got to be taught before it’s too late,
Before you are six or seven or eight,
To hate all the people your relatives hate,
You’ve got to be carefully taught! — Hammerstein
By singing this song, he’s pointing out that prejudice is a learned feeling and that there’s not a natural tendency toward it. He can’t imagine bringing Liat home with him and creating a life with her because he knows his relatives are so enmeshed with their own sets of biases that they would never be able to accept her.
Back to Nellie: she tries to forget Emile, she really does. She even sings an extremely famous song about how she’s going to wash him out of her hair. But when the time comes for him to begin his task as a spotter, and she realizes how dangerous his mission will be, she knows she can’t hide the truth any longer. She’s head over heels for the man, and while he’s gone, she goes to the plantation and forges a relationship with his children.
There are a lot of wonderfully funny moments in this movie, as well as some fantastic music. It’s a titch racy and flirtatious here and there, and I wasn’t terribly amused at the instant physical relationship Cable has with Liat. But I will tell you this – if you or your teenager are seeking to learn more about World War II, prejudice, and tension during that time frame, I can think of no better movie to teach it to you. Not rated.
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