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Clip description
Sondra, a Malay girl (Marcelle Marnay) calls Mara (Dennis Hoey) a white savage when he rejects her advances because of her colour. Akbar Jhan (Ashton Jarry) arrives with Beatrice Lynn (Margot Rhys) and Mara is well pleased with her appearance.
Curator’s notes
Much of the film is concerned with the question of who Mara will ‘settle down’ with – and specifically, what colour the woman should be. It’s taken for granted that she must be white, although the casting of a very pretty actress (Marcelle Marnay) as the temptress suggests the choice is not easy to make. This temptation by an exotic woman of colour was common in Hollywood South Sea islands movies, indeed any adventure movie shot in an exotic location. Almost invariably, the male lead never ‘gives in’ to the temptress. Mixing of the races would become a theme only much later, in Hollywood musicals such as South Pacific.
