High Barbaree (1947)

I like the storyline of this show,it attract me so much

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

The story-telling is good with flashbacks.The film is both funny and heartbreaking. You smile in a scene and get a soulcrushing revelation in the next.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Van Johnson plays a downed flier in the Pacific War, the only survivor with his co-pilot Cameron Mitchell in a plane they've managed to make seaworthy and float. As a lad he was told some tall tales of a legendary island like Shangri-La in the Pacific called High Barbaree. He and that teller of tall tales Johnson's uncle Thomas Mitchell actually plotted where the island should be and low and behold Johnson and Cameron Mitchell are down in the Pacific right where this mythical island is supposed to be.In reading some of the books on western voyages of discovery a number of mapmakers in the 15th. 16th, and 17th centuries made mention of a mythical island called Hy-Brasil. You'll find it on many charts of the period. How the legend started who knows, but it was real to a lot of people just as High Barbaree is here.On that voyage Johnson tells Cameron Mitchell all about his life in flashbacks, about High Barbaree and about his life and choice of career. The women aren't left out as he has two women interested in him, girl next door June Allyson and rich girl Marilyn Maxwell.High Barbaree is a nice film about the hopes and dreams of one young man who went to war. Does Van Johnson find High Barbaree? For that you watch the film for.

An unusual film in that it highlights a romance based on a longstanding friendship.The performances of Van Johnson and June Allyson are OK but I didn't understand how Nancy and Uncle Thad could have come upon Alec's downed plane in the middle of nowhere when the aircraft's signaling system had been torpedoed. This film is indeed powerful as we watch the only two survivors of the shoot-down dispose of a deceased crew and try to stay alive on a cup of water and hopes of reaching an idyllic isle. However, it didn't make sense that a shot-down plane would float that way on the water. Wouldn't it have sunk to the ocean floor? Despite these incongruities, as this movie edged toward its conclusion, I found myself wondering whether a 1947 American-made film might actually allow the good guy to expire. Then his perky girlfriend appears out of nowhere? A very puerile and unlikely denouement...

This is one of the stranger plots I've seen in a film in some time. Now I am not saying it's bad--just odd. My advice is stick with it--as the film progresses, it gets better--even if the 'High Barbaree' concept is bizarre and unnecessary."High Barbaree" begins during WWII. Van Johnson is the pilot of a Catalina seaplane. During a mission bombing an enemy sub (a pretty typical sort of thing for this slow plane), it gets the sub--but the sub gets the plane. Johnson and one other crew member survive the attack but the plane ditches in the ocean and the engines are shot. Their only hope is to be picked up or find land before they die from lack of food and water. During the interim, Johnson talks to his wounded comrade--telling him his life story as well as stories about his uncle (Thomas Mitchell) and his fictional land of Barbaree (this name, by the way, is taken from a sea chantey). He also talks about his love for his childhood sweetheart (June Allison).As I said above, the island of High Barbaree was totally unnecessary to the plot in my opinion. However, the love story between Allison and Johnson was very nice, as they both had a nice boy and girl next door look. These parts of the film were quite romantic as well. All in all, the film is a bit flawed but well worth seeing. Thank goodness MGM changed the original ending--it sounds absolutely dreadful (see the IMDb trivia for more on this).

Van Johnson and June Allyson head a talented cast in this enchantingly dotty romantic fantasy about true love in peace and war. The romance begins when they're children, and the childhood scenes have some charmingly surreal moments, such as when the two run away to join the circus. Someone must have been reading Freud in his spare time when making this one. There are enough symbols, phallic and otherwise, to fill a fair-sized textbook. Director Jack Conway did an admirable job on the film, with beautifully composed shots which at times recall the best silent pictures. He had flair for investing what are, on the surface, mundane images,--a water tower, a tropical island--with a subliminal power rare in a Hollywood movie. Since much of the story is related in flashback, there's a slight but unmistakable distortion involved in what unfolds on the screen that makes the movie feel at times like a dream. There are strange, abrupt transitions,--a storm comes seemingly out of nowhere--that make the movie resonate in one's memory years after one has seen it. Corny as hell, this is in many respects a remarkable film.