I love this movie so much

Simply Perfect

Absolutely Fantastic

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

The technical credits are impeccable, the special effects of the earthquake and the tidal wave are very impressive and still hold up (easily the best sequence in the film - it lasts from the 83rd to the 90th minute), and the acting is very fine (Lana Turner covers all the bases), but the big, long, ambitious story fails to grab your interest, despite spanning many years and at least three continents. ** out of 4.

Richard Hart (William) isn't particularly pleasant and needs to do something with his life. Lana Turner (Marianne) is determined to make something of him and applies herself to making him a success coz she fancies him. However, he prefers Lana's sister Donna Reed (Marguerite). It's a highly improbable story but it keeps you watching with plenty of drama and emotion creating a rewarding experience. You won't guess the ending as it can end in so many different ways. I didn't guess right and hoped for things to pan out differently. It's sad yet resolved in a fulfilling manner.The cast are good and there are standout scenes that engage you emotionally as well as action scenes that keep up the tension. The locations add to the epic feel to the film as quite a lot happens. Accept that it's a long film and it is a good film choice to spend over a couple of hours on. Interestingly, Linda Christian (Hine-Moa) plays the Maori maid/nanny to Lana Turner whilst in New Zealand and you feel that there is something evil about her. There was – in real life she pinched Lana's boyfriend Tyrone Power from her and married him the following year.Lana and Donna's parents Edmund Gwenn (Octavius) and Gladys Cooper (Sophie) deserve a mention for the deathbed scene and the story has a message of goodwill and hope even if it takes a strange route to get there. It's OK to love someone else and take a different path in life. There are many successful arranged marriages where love is not necessarily there from the beginning. And as for finding God, well that's just a mental illness kind of thing.

When I decided to watch GREEN DOLPHIN STREET on TCM recently I didn't expect much. A standard period drama starring Lana Turner, Donna Reed and Frank Morgan (the wizard in WIZARD OF OZ). It started nicely enough: beautiful cinematography, nice sets and location. But then things got more, eh, odd and then even more odd and yes, it morphed into something that was full-stop wacky. I mean seriously jaw-on-the-floor wacky. On one hand, the film didn't work at all but then the whole thing is so incredibly and spectacularly over-the-top that I was pleasantly surprised by this unexpected outcome. It wasn't the thoughtful period drama I expected but more an over-the-top ultra camp thingamajig that confounded me nonstop.The story is nearly impossible to describe because it goes here and there with no rhyme or reason, baffling the viewers with its overwrought drama that makes very little sense. If you saw TOP SECRET, the comedy from the 1980s starring Val Kilmer with all the incongruous elements (spy movie/beach movie/elvis movie/great escape etc) in it, well, GDS is like that but treated with a straight face. It's a combo of a Jane Austin period piece/swashbuckler/KING KONG/disaster epic/PEYTON PLACE all rolled into one. 3/4s into the movie, I thought nothing would top what had happened previously and the there's the scene when Donna Reed is caught in the rising tide and has to climb a well-like cave, that scene sent me over the edge. The well/cave is not something like 30 feet high but more like "Empire State Building" high. What happens to Reed's character after this scene is so priceless (certainly when you think of the story-line) that I was wondering "how come this film is not a camp classic?" That scene is so striking that it alone deserves to be remembered as one of the most brilliantly overwrought "symbolic" scenes of all time. It actually outdoes BLACK NARCISSUS (there's also a nunnery on top of a hill/cliff waiting at the end of the well) which was also released in 1947, several months before GDS! GREEN DOLPHIN STREET is like BLACK NARCISSUS' illegitimate child no one wants to talk about. In the film's many OTT scene, there's also an earthquake AND a roaring river tsunami (it won the Oscar for special effects over BLACK NARCISSUS which is something the other more famous film cannot claim), all of this over two sisters fighting for the love of one clueless man.Not a great film by any means but I give it 10 stars because it's pure ultra camp. It's a must see if you like camp and the unexpected. It's a totally hidden gem (what kind of gem it's hard to say).Who knew such a benign title (which is totally pointless vis a vis the story) could hide so much good stuff.

I accidentally stumbled on this movie on television while trying to pass a lazy summer day when I was a child. I was instantly intrigued by the two beautiful female stars, and the impressive period setting, as well as by the fact that I had never heard of the film. I was in for a big surprise. I expected a mildly entertaining but ultimately conventional Victorian melodrama, but the film was wrought with twists and turns that I never would have expected based on the first few minutes. In addition, it is filmed with lavish spectacle and breathtaking special effects that are no less than awe inspiring for 1947. I had been raised on classic movies but I had never seen anything like it and I haven't since. I was bewitched by the sheer magnitude of the production, and by the bizarre fantasy element of its setting. It is not so realistic as to be mundane, but has a sort of charming phoniness about it (not sarcastic at all) that makes watching it almost like going to Disneyland. I was inspired to research New Zealand and channel Island history, and read the book. I have not found a movie yet with so profound a sense of exotic mystery as this one. My first viewing of this was a once in a lifetime experience. I hope it will be the same for you.