"Bird of paradise"(1932) coming May 1st from Kino

[jaaguir]

Bird of paradise

I'm very happy Kino is releasing "Bird of paradise"(1932). They have at least one sell for sure. Love this movie since I was a kid.

This was the first movie that Max Steiner wrote a full-on score for, I think. That makes it one of the first Hollywood movies to have a score, period, since the early talkies didn't usually have them, they used mostly source music in some scenes (or they were musicals), or they used classical music excerpts in a few scenes.

It was made at RKO while Selznick was head of production, hence labeled as part of Kino's "Selznick collection", I guess.

The movie can be summed up as Joel McCrea and Dolores del Rio cavorting half-naked in a tropical island. It's a love-story/melodrama, as most movies of the '30s were, but it also has a touch of adventure (the american boat kind of wrecks against the "lost island", and later the natives can turn un-friendly...).

Dolores del Rio was a silent movie star. I believe her name was still above McCrea's in the original poster art. She plays a native who can't speak English in this movie, so her dialog is significantly reduced...

Most of it was actually shot on location in Hawaii. The great King Vidor directed it.

I wonder what their source is, but I bet they wouldn't release terrible product. I own an old dvd, which was supposed to be better than most public-domain editions, and it still looked so-so.

I'm very happy.