Island in the Sun (1957)

Island in the Sun is a 1957 drama film produced by Darryl F. Zanuck and directed by Robert Rossen. The film is about race relations and interracial romance set in the fictitious island of Santa Marta. Barbados and Grenada were selected as the sites for the movie based on the 1955 novel by Alec Waugh. The film was controversial at the time of its release for its on-screen portrayal of interracial romance.

Director – Robert Rossen

Writers – Alfred Hayes, Alec Waugh (novel)

Cast –
James Mason as Maxwell Fleury
Harry Belafonte as David Boyeur
Joan Fontaine as Mavis Norman
Joan Collins as Jocelyn Fleury
Dorothy Dandridge as Margot Seaton
Michael Rennie as Hilary Carson
Patricia Owens as Sylvia Fleury
John Justin as Denis Archer
Stephen Boyd as Euan, Lord Templeton
Diana Wynyard as Mrs. Fleury
Basil Sydney as Julian Fleury
John Williams as Colonel Whittingham
Ronald Squire as Lord Templeton
Hartley Power as Bradshaw

Watch “Island in the Sun” (1957)

Plot

During one spring in the 1950s the complex relationships of four couples, of black, white and mixed race, play out against the pronounced social inequality dividing the ruling British elite and the slave-descended native population of a small (fictitious) West Indian island.

Maxwell Fleury (James Mason) is a white plantation owner’s son who suffers from an inferiority complex and makes rash decisions to prove his worth. He is tormented by jealousy of his wife Sylvia (Patricia Owens), and is envious of his younger sister Jocelyn (Joan Collins), who is being courted by the handsome, young, Oxford-bound Euan Templeton (Stephen Boyd), newly arrived on Santa Marta to visit his father, Lord Templeton (Ronald Squire, the island’s governor).

David Boyeur (Harry Belafonte), an ambitious and self-advancing young black union leader emerging as a powerful politician, is diplomatically courted by Templeton yet seen by some as a threat to the white ruling class. Mavis Norman (Joan Fontaine), the widow of the deceased elder scion of the Fleury plantation, Arthur, develops a romantic interest in Boyeur that leads to both attraction and tension between the two.

Denis Archer (John Justin), the governor’s aide-de-camp and want-to-be novelist, becomes smitten by Margot Seaton (Dorothy Dandridge), a mixed-race beauty seeking to better her position in life through hard work over irrepressible feminine charm. He wins her away from Boyeur and gets her a job as a secretary in the governor’s office.

Insecure in his marriage, Maxwell magnifies a case of mistaken identity into the obsession that his wife is having an affair with Hilary Carson (Michael Rennie), an attractive and single former war hero. He strangles Carson during a quarrel, then tries to make it look like a robbery. Colonel Whittingham (John Williams), the cagey chief of police, investigates the crime as a murder. Soon, he begins dropping telling hints to Maxwell drawn from Dostoevsky’s “Crime and Punishment”.

Euan falls heavily for Jocelyn, who puts off his proposal of marriage, to be sure “everything is right”.

Maxwell decides to run for the legislature. A visiting American journalist, Bradshaw (Hartley Power), writes an exposé revealing that Maxwell’s paternal grandmother was part black, which is resignedly confirmed by the senior Fleury. At a campaign rally Maxwell first publicly embraces his newfound bi-racial identity, but is jeered by a black crowd egged on by Boyeur, which rejects his embrace. Humiliated, he then denounces his black heritage and insults everyone there.

Jocelyn learns she is pregnant by Euan, but, with a title and seat in the House of Lords lying ahead for him, does not wish to burden him with a child of mixed race. Seeking to eliminate this roadblock to marriage and her daughter’s happiness, her mother reveals to her that Julian Fleury was not her father but a fully white Englishman instead, the result of secreted affair.

Maxwell realizes he has been cornered by Wittinham. A broken man, he attempts to muster the will for suicide, but fails. Resolved to his fate, he arranges to surrender to the police.

Jocelyn and Euan wed, then board a plane to England, followed up the gangway by the also newly wedded Margot and Denis, on to their own new life together there.

Mavis presses her campaign to become serious with Boyeur but he rejects her advances, maintaining he must stay within his own race to be accepted by his people. Ruefully, she accepts his rebuff, and, hurt by his jilt, leaves him behind at their rendezvous at the beach. Boyeur is left to walk back alone to town in the dying light approaching dusk.