Robert Flaherty was to have co-directed but he bowed out, leaving MGM "action" director W. S. Van Dyke on location in the South Seas to film this story of white man's corruption of the island paradise, based on Frederick O'Brien's account of his travels. Some of the sequences retain the Flaherty "touch," to be sure. 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. In its poetry and its politics, White Shadows in the South Seas is many cuts above the standard Hollywood Polynesian fare, ranking with Murnau's Tabu and Flaherty's Moana. (Interestingly, Van Dyke went on to direct Tarzan the Ape Man, 1932). With synchronized sound effects and the musical score, the film was released as MGM's first sound feature.