Diamond Head

The San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival always has enticing "Out of the Vaults" programs, which revive films that remind modern viewers how images of Asian Americans were portrayed in bygone decades of film history. This year's choice is Diamond Head, and it plays at noon at the Castro Theatre this Sunday, March 15th.

This Panavision, Eastmancolor drama was released by Columbia Pictures near the tail end of the classic Hollywood "Studio System" era when producers were looking for new ways to close the generation gap in movie attendance patterns. Which is why we have Charlton Heston, a star for over a decade by then, and James Darren, at the time still best known for Gidget, in a movie together, playing a white planter and his sister's Native Hawaiian suitor, respectively. If it seemed timely to make Diamond Head in 1963 in the midst of the Civil Rights Era and shortly after Hawaiian statehood, it may be even more timely to show it now in the context of this festival, while a multiracial President, born in Honolulu, is newly in the White House.

One might think of Diamond Head as a precursor to Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, released four years later. It's not as widely-remembered as the latter film, perhaps because its star wattage is lower, or perhaps because most of the principals are played by white actors (France Nuyen in the role of Heston's mistress excepted); those playing Polynesian characters are wearing a "Max Factor tan". There are differences and similarities between the two films' approaches to miscegenation. In Diamond Head, conflict is less over inter-cultural misunderstanding than over racial superiority and a sense of Manifest Destiny that dies hard. But like in Stanley Kramer's film, white characters' motivations for entering interracial relationships may in fact reflect their own sense of self more than they genuinely express love- just as the films themselves look at issues of prejudice from their own Hollywood perspective.

Nonetheless, this promises to be a fun screening on a screen as large as the Castro's. The film's director Guy Green cut his teeth as a cinematographer for David Lean, so it's no surprise that island vistas are prominent. There's plenty of music (the score composed by John Williams), romance, and a bit of action in the film. And the cast is rounded out by beautiful Yvette Mimeux as the planter's sister, George Chakiris as James Darren's half-brother, Aline MacMahon in one of her last film roles as their mother, and even Philip Ahn in a small but crucial role.