Incannerax What a waste of my time!!!

Colibel Terrible acting, screenplay and direction.

Pacionsbo Absolutely Fantastic

Rio Hayward All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

vincentlynch-moonoi If this had been done as a multi-episode television mini-series (I know, t.v. was not really around back in 1947), it would have worked perfectly. Because this film seemed to me more like a series of mostly great vignettes that didn't quite come together perfectly.The story takes place in the 1840s, in England, where 2 sisters (played by Donna Reed and Lana Turner) compete for the same man. They are the daughters of the wealthy Edmund Gwenn and Gladys Cooper. The man they both love goes into the navy, but on a drunken night is rolled, misses his ship, and is now AWOL. Rather than be imprisoned, he heads for New Zealand (which looks remarkably like the forests of the United States). He writes a letter proposing to Donna Reed, but drunk once again, mistakenly writes the name of Lana Turner. So Lana heads to New Zealand and marries, but has a marriage that is not bad, but less than blissful. Meanwhile, Donna Reed -- after the death of both parents (was there a suicide involved?) -- decides to become a nun, just as Lana and her husband return to England.Lana Turner is really good here. She was one of my 2 favorite actresses when I was growing up (the other being Sophia Loren; clearly I knew what a really fine woman was, even at age 12). Imagine my disappointment years later when I saw her in an extended television interview and she didn't seem any too bright. But, she was still a wonderful actress. BTW, she's a brunette here.Van Heflin, who wanted to be a suitor to Lana, is first to get to New Zealand, and becomes involved in the timber industry. What an odd coincidence that the 3 main characters all end up all the way from England to New Zealand at about the same time. Heflin is okay here.Donna Reed is wonderful, and I wish the film would have spent more time with her story.Richard Hart is the husband/suitor. I wasn't familiar with him. Turns out he died at age 35 from heart issues and had a short career. I really didn't care for him much here.Frank Morgan has a great role here as the father of Richard Hart, but alas he passes away not far into the film.Edmund Gwenn and Gladys Cooper (as husband and wife) are terrific, as they almost always were.Dame May Witty plays the Mother Superior at the convent. We see little of her, but she pops up throughout the film at opportune moments. Limited, though good performance.The special effects during the earthquake and tidal wave scenes are quite remarkable for 1947.A very good film which could have been great. Worth watching.

Robert J. Maxwell 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.

Hot 888 Mama . . . 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.

vitaleralphlouis Weeding out the comic book movies aimed at 10 year old's, there's almost nothing at the movies this summer. So I remembered this MGM classic from 60 years ago when I was in 3rd grade and found the VHS at Video Vault. In 1947, kids used to love the westerns, Walt Disney, and action pictures, but we were also smart enough to appreciate certain movies made for the grown-ups. Green Dolphin Street is one of them.A romance-adventure filling the screen from St Pierre off the coast of France, to the China coast, to New Zealand. Big ships at sea, tribal warfare, an earthquake, a tidal wave, a crawl through the smuggler's rock cave, the glorious site of Mont St. Michel --- a convent on a rugged mountain island cut off from the mainland once a day by the high tide. On top of this add two beautiful sisters and two rugged men. All this brought together with MGM's talent for making the big ones with uncompromising bigness, but not forgetting a strong storyline.In 1947 I thought the earthquake in New Zealand was pure fiction, but a Google search proved that quakes are frequent there.Others will disagree, but I found the special effects of 60 years ago to be much more effective than the silly, overblown stuff they do these days. Exhibit 1 is Peter Jackson's stunningly stupid "remake" of 1933's KING KONG, where the original film and its special effects still stand tall after 80 years, and the newer thing is a failure that struck out fast.Good movies often lead to travel. If you drop everything after GDS and head for Mont St. Michel, visit the monastery (not convent) and have the omelet at Mere Poulard's -- the best you'll ever have anywhere on Earth.Godless liberals who squirm at the sight of a Christmas Crib will be most uncomfortable with the many devout religious scenes in Green Dolphin Street. The secret is that Hollywood was frequently religious back then; patriotic too!