A bunch of men on a yacht stop off at a Polynesian island, where Johnny and Luana fall in love. The rest of the men leave, but Johnny stays behind. He absconds with Luana, and they find an island paradise to shack up on.But she is destined to be a virgin sacrifice for the Volcano God, and when it starts to erupt, the natives find her and bring her back. Johnny tries to rescue her, but he becomes part of the sacrifice. He tells Luana there is only one true God, to whom he says the Lord's Prayer. The sailors return and rescue them, but Luana voluntarily returns to be fed to the volcano. So, the Christian God loses out to the Volcano God, who gets his sacrifice.She is not a virgin anymore, but what the Volcano God doesn't know won't hurt him.

Quite honestly, until I started reading some of the other reviews here I never gave it a second thought that Dolores del Rio's early swim scene might have been done in the nude. It just didn't strike me that way. There were other scenes in the picture between Johnny (Joel McCrea) and Luana that seemed much more suggestive and erotic, as when they traded splashes of coconut milk on the beach. The principals were certainly well cast for their athleticism and sex appeal, and I'd be curious to have been a movie goer back in the day to experience a first hand reaction to the events portrayed on screen.One scene that caught my attention occurred between Johnny and the overweight native woman when at one point, Johnny fashions a makeshift slide out of a large palm frond and they both slide down a steep embankment. I thought that was pretty original when I saw Michael Dougas and Kathleen Turner do it in "Romancing the Stone", but here director Vidor came up with it a half century earlier. For me at least, that was a sit up and take notice moment.Storywise, the effort is almost stereotypical; a young virginal maiden is destined to be sacrificed to the island gods until a captivating young hero attempts to whisk her away for a life of tranquility. The concept seems romantic, but then I thought about how I'd spend day after day on a remote island in the Pacific every day for the rest of my life and then it didn't seem so ideal. OK, Dolores del Rio may have been part of the equation, but seriously, the routine would at some point overwhelm one with severe boredom.For 1932 and straight out of the silent era, this one had some fine moments and innovative action sequences like the shark attack, Johnny's battle in the whirlpool and of course, the erupting volcano. The flying fish celebration was certainly something I'd never seen before. It all resolves to poignancy with the closing scene when Luana takes her leave of a dying Johnny to fulfill her destiny as a sacrifice to the gods.

Yaaawwwn. As Shakespeare put it, much ado about nothing. Most of the critics seemed to take "Boid of Paradise" (my 1st wife was from Brooklyn) as something in need of serious thought. I seriously thought it was tiresome.Big fuss about Del Rio's nude underwater swim. You couldn't even notice a nipple in the ripple. Hedy Lamarr displayed more skin in her first flick.Joel McRae, star of my fave Hitchock movie, "Foreign Correspondent" looked too skinny as he swung from vine to vine. Weismuller was really a swinger (in more ways than one) in the Tarzan series.Some of the scenes were ludicrous, especially the one with McRae riding tortoise-back. Hi-yo turtle.The native dance scenes were impressive, and, to be honest, the love scenes between the two stars were pretty convincing. One looked like a French kiss or, at least, a French-Canadian kiss.The erupting volcano and flowing lava did not convince, but, then it was '32 and special effects were not as sophisticated as they are today.All in all, "Bird of Paradise" was so-so. Hey, this bird laid an egg.

This feature is interesting in a number of respects, both in its techniques and in its subject matter. And if neither of those is enough, Dolores Del Rio has a role that allows her to dazzle the viewer with her beauty and her screen presence. A young-looking Joel McCrea, as her co-star, is himself earnest and likable, though he is overshadowed by Del Rio in their scenes together.The story starts off with McCrea, as a sailor on a yacht, being rescued from a shark by Del Rio, as the daughter of the king of a native tribe. Romance develops from there, with McCrea's character dreaming of taking her back home with him when his trip is done, but having his plans hindered by the responsibilities she faces as a king's daughter. (Why any man, given the opportunity to live alone with a woman like Del Rio on a tropical island, would yearn for 'civilization', is also a pretty good question.)The story features some rather sensitive themes in the running contact between the two cultures. If it does not always face them comfortably, at least it is relatively even-handed much of the time. Although some 'primitive' beliefs are ascribed to the natives' culture, they are portrayed as sincere beliefs. There are also a number of points of interest on the technical side. Most obviously, there are the wealth of atmospheric shots of the tropical setting. But beyond that, there are a few interesting attempts to offer some interesting views with the camera, such as the water-level shots in the opening sailing sequence.One particularly interesting idea is that, for a long time, the language barrier is allowed to stand realistically between the characters, especially in McCrea's efforts to communicate, instead of using a stock device to get around it. Only much later is it assumed that Del Rio's character has learned enough English to be able to communicate.Certainly, there are times when this feature shows a little of its age, and in some respects it's not completely successful. But it would probably be worth watching to see Del Rio alone, and the rest of it contains several interesting aspects.