HIS MAJESTY O'KEEFE

US, 1954, 91 minutes, Colour.
Burt Lancaster, Joan Rice, Andre Morell, Grant Taylor.
Directed by Byron Haskin.

His Majesty O’ Keefe is quite an engaging adventure filmed on location in the Fiji area. It is an adventure story but has overtones of colonialism and the problems of race relationships in the South Pacific. Burt Lancaster, early in his career, is a vigorous hero.

1. The adventure ingredients of this kind of film and their popularity? Saturday matinee style for young audiences?

2. The importance of the Pacific backgrounds, the Fijian locations, colour, South Pacific?

3. How authentic did the atmosphere of the South Pacific seem? the islands and the natives, the sea and the islands, copra, the pacific trade and pirates, slave raiders, Hong Kong headquarters? The insight into the attitudes of the people of the islands?

4. The atmosphere of the South Sea, the island of Tap, the other islands and communications between them, travel? Religious background, work, greed? The exploitation of the island men?

5. The details of the way of life, rulers, feast days, fights for kingship?

6. The details of the western exploitation ot these peoples and the copra? money motivation, the trading posts and the personnel? The clash of motivation and attitudes?

7. O’Keefs? as entering into this particular world? As a type, his greed and ambition, his being saved by the people of Tap? His impulsive fighting of their king? His relationship with Alfred? With the island girl? Importance of the trip to Hong Kong trying to raise money and gain a ship? His falling in love, discovering the people of Tap, their stone? His helping them with explosives? Their accepting him as king? His fight with the King? The German hostility and the marines landing? His decision to forfeit kingship and go back to Germany for the trial? His final decision? Attitudes, motivation, the effect of people's lives and deaths on him?

8. O’Keefe’s? wife, her youth, her father, her vigil, to Hong Kong and its delight, marriage, her understanding O’Keefe? and her disappointment with him? The final influence she had in his decision?

9. O’Keefe? in Hong Kong as a different person? O’Keefe? at Tap?

10. The sympathetic portrayal of Alfred and his work on the island of Tap? Worper and the other Germane on Yap? The irony and pathos of Alfred's death?

11. The enjoyment value of this kind of adventure The attitude and motivations behind it in view of current Third World problems?