Robert Flaherty was to have co-directed, but he bowed out, leaving “action” director W. S. Van Dyke on location in the South Seas to adapt this story of the white man's corruption of the island paradises. Film historian Georges Sadoul notes, “There is considerable disagreement as to how much of the final film is Flaherty's but certainly some of the sequences seem to have his touch.” Stunning location photography in the Marquesa Islands complements a genuinely effective melodrama that has been hailed by the French surrealists, Ado Kyrou calling it “one of the most beautiful poems about love we have been given to see.” Monte Blue gives a tremendous performance as a drunken doctor who meets his demise when he refuses to stoop to the level of the genocidal colonizers. White Shadows in the South Seas is not only cuts above the standard Hollywood Polynesian fare, but it ranks with Murnau's Tabu and Flaherty's Moana.