Return to Paradise (1953)

Director
Mark Robson

Main cast
Gary Cooper; Barry Jones; Roberta Haynes; Moira Walker

Genres
Drama

Description
An American drifter comes to a remote Polynesian island controlled by a Puritanical missionary and turns the social life of the island upside-down.


Similar movies

Lewis, Sheriff and Tony are three friends vacationing in Malaysia. Sheriff and Tony eventually leave to pursue careers in New York, but Lewis stays behind to work with orangutans. Two years later, Sheriff and Tony learn that, because of their past actions, Lewis has been arrested for drug possession. With Lewis facing a death sentence, the friends are left with a difficult decision: return to Malaysia and split Lewis' sentence, or let him die.
A U.S. missionary (Barbara Stanwyck) is gradually seduced by a courtly warlord (Nils Asther) holding her in Shanghai.
Sister Rachel Taylor of Boise, Idaho is an eager young missionary of the LDS Church who has been sent on an 18-month long mission to Austria. Rachel finds herself having a hard time adjusting to her new cultural surroundings in the foreign country. Due to differences in opinion, she is also unable to get along with the companion missionary that was assigned to her by the church.
A wife and mother starts an affair with a young missionary... with disastrous consequences.
All her life Englishwoman Gladys Aylward knew that China was the place where she belonged. Not qualified to be sent there as a missionary, Gladys works as a domestic to earn the money to send herself to a poor, remote village. There she eventually lives a full and happy life: running the inn, acting as "foot inspector", advising the local Mandarin and even winning the heart of mixed race Captain Lin Nan. But Gladys discovers her real destiny when the country is invaded by Japan and the Chinese children need her to save their lives. Based on a true story.
Four sisters in New Zealand fall for four U.S. soldiers en route to the Pacific theater in WWII.
Lola, is a 1961 film, the debut film directed by Jacques Demy as a tribute to director Max Ophüls and is described by Demy as a "musical without music". Anouk Aimée starred in the title role. The film was restored and re-released by Demy's widow, French filmmaker Agnès Varda.
A missionary tries to reform a streetwalker trapped on a Pacific island.
Sometimes, we're just waiting for a miracle. A nurse who is a Jehovah's Witness, grows fond of the miracle survivor of a plane crash. Two sexagenarians, a bartender and a parking lot attendant want to explore their forbidden passions. A conservative, well-off couple drown their disappointments in booze and gambling. And a man does his utmost to make amends for an irredeemable action, bringing us to a plane bound for Cuba. An ensemble film where every character affects the lives of others.
Gabrielle Van Der Mal gave up everything to become a nun. But her faith and her vows are forever being tested: first in the missionary Congo hospital where she assists the brilliant and handsome Dr. Fortunati and then at the mother house in France when World War II has broken out and the nuns are forbidden by the order to take sides.
An inspirational true story. On what seemed like any other day, Elders Travis Tuttle (Corbin Allred) and Andrew Propst (Maclain Nelson) are approached by Nikolai (Nikita Bogolyubov) to teach a friend. But then the missionaries experience the unimaginable - they are kidnapped, beaten, and held for ransom. While their families, friends, and the world pray for their safe release, Tuttle and Propst are tested physically, emotionally, and most of all spiritually.
Quiet Tarkovskian drama about an old man who lives alone on a deserted island which the Soviet fighter planes use for nighttime target practicing. A young mute boy is sent from the mainland to keep him company. Both are haunted by memories, the boy about his mother and the old man about his younger days as a missionary in Africa.
John H. Groberg, a middle class kid from Idaho Falls, crosses the Pacific to become a Mormon missionary in the remote and exotic Tongan island kingdom during the 1950's. He leaves behind a loving family and the true love of his life, Jean. Through letters and musings across the miles, John shares his humbling and sometimes hilarious adventures with "the girl back home", and her letters buoy up his spirits in difficult times. John must struggle to overcome language barriers, physical hardship and deep-rooted suspicion to earn the trust and love of the Tongan people he has come to serve. Throughout his adventure-filled three years on the islands, he discovers friends and wisdom in the most unlikely places. John H. Groberg's Tongan odyssey will change his life forever.
Aaron Davis (Steve Sandvoss) and Christian Markelli (Wes Ramsey) are the two most opposite people in the world. Aaron is a young Elder (or a Mormon missionary) who wants to do his family proud and is quite passionate about his religion and film. Christian is a shallow WeHo waiter/party boy who only looks forward to bedding a new guy every night.
Engineer Jake Holman arrives aboard the gunboat U.S.S. San Pablo, assigned to patrol a tributary of the Yangtze in the middle of exploited and revolution-torn 1926 China. His iconoclasm and cynical nature soon clash with the "rice-bowl" system which runs the ship and the uneasy symbiosis between Chinese and foreigner on the river. Hostility towards the gunboat's presence reaches a climax when the boat must crash through a river-boom and rescue missionaries upriver at China Light Mission.
Abner Hale, a rigid and humorless New England missionary, marries the beautiful Jerusha Bromley and takes her to the exotic island kingdom of Hawaii, intent on converting the natives. But the clash between the two cultures is too great and instead of understanding there comes tragedy.
In a mission in China in 1935, Agatha Andrews is a rigid missionary beset by Mongolian bandits led by Warlord chief Tunga Khan. With her are her assistant Jane Argent, staff members Emma Clark, Miss Russell and Miss Binns, head of the British mission, Charles Pather, a teacher at the mission and his pregnant wife Florrie. When Dr. D.R. Cartwright arrives, she agrees to sacrifice herself to the Tunga Khan in exchange for his letting the ladies go free.
The Falls is a feature film about two missionaries that fall in love while on their mission. RJ travels to a small town in Oregon with Elder Merrill to serve their mission and teach the words of Joseph Smith. Living together and sharing the challenge of leaving home, the two men help each other discover their strengths. They share a passion for their faith and learn to express their feelings, risking the only community they have for a forbidden intimacy.
Life as a Mormon missionary isn't what 19-year-old Brandon Allen expected: so many rules and so few successes. Los Angeles is as unrepentant as Sodom and Gomorrah. He's forced to share a small apartment with five young prank-loving missionaries and, to top it off, his first companion, 29-year-old Marcus Dalton, proves to be a harsh mentor. After only one day as a missionary, Allen is ready to hang up his necktie and go home. Allen becomes a part of the drama occurring under the everyday surface of missionary life. After only a few intense days, Allen finds faith he didn't know he had, and courage he didn't know he lacked. He learns that the time has come to put away childish things, and to become more than just a man--to become a man of God.
Paradise Road is a 1997 film which tells the story of a group of English, American, Dutch and Australian women who are imprisoned in Sumatra during World War II. It was directed by Bruce Beresford and stars Glenn Close as beatific Adrienne Pargiter, Frances McDormand as the brash Dr. Verstak, Pauline Collins as missionary Margaret Drummond (based on missionary Margaret Dryburgh), Julianna Margulies as American socialite Topsy Merritt, Jennifer Ehle as British doyenne and model Rosemary Leighton Jones, Cate Blanchett as Australian nurse Susan McCarthy and Elizabeth Spriggs as dowager Imogene Roberts. Basing his picture on real events, Bruce Beresford tells the story of a vocal orchestra created by the women in a Japanese P.O.W. camp, a classic survivors' tale extolling women's ability to survive hardship and atrocity through perseverance, solidarity and creativity.
An Eskimo who has had little contact with white men goes to a trading post where he accidentally kills a missionary and finds himself being pursued by the police.
Martin and Hazel Quarrier are small-town fundamentalist missionaries sent to the jungles of South America to convert the Indians. Their remote mission was previously run by the Catholics, before the natives murdered them all. They are sent by the pompous Leslie Huben, who runs the missionary effort in the area but who seems more concerned about competing with his Catholic 'rivals' than in the Indians themselves. Hazel is terrified of the Indians while Martin is fascinated. Soon American pilot Lewis Moon joins the Indian tribe but is attracted by Leslie's young wife, Andy. Can the interaction of these characters and cultures, and the advancing bulldozers of civilization, avoid disaster?
A Chinese missionary comes to England. He helps a young girl ill-treated by her father. A remake of D. W. Griffith's "Masterpiece".
Tough Caribbean freighter Captain Sam Whelan engages Sally Clark, a tramp masquerading as a missionary's daughter, to care for an abandoned baby on board his ship. En route to New York, ships mate Gatson sexually attacks her. The Captain knocks Gatson overboard in an ensuing scuffle. A romance developing between the Captain and Miss Clark is put to the test in New York after an assault investigation uncovers the girl's questionable past.
Sadie Thompson arrives in Pago-Pago to start a new life, but when extremist missionary Davidson lashes out against her lifestyle and tries to force her back to San Francisco, she may lose her second chance.
Ginger Ted, AKA Edward Claude Wilson (Charles Laughton) a drunkard and womanizer, and Miss Jones,(Elsa Lanchester) a missionary, live in the Alas Islands. During a cholera epidemic, Ginger Ted and Miss Jones are sent to an outlying part of the islands to run a hospital; on their return, their motorboat breaks down, and they are marooned overnight on a small island.
Deanna Durbin stars as a missionary who goes to great lengths, even posing as "Mrs. Holliday", in order to get some Chinese war orphans into the United States.
American businessmen and missionaries working in China are captured and held prisoner by a local warlord.
A group of native Liberian missionaries make a desperate cross-country trip through their war torn country to save one of their own.
The Falls: Testament of Love is a continuation of the story of RJ Smith and Chris Merrill, two Mormon missionaries that fell in love during their mission in a small town in Oregon. The boys haven't spoken in five years, but when an unexpected tragedy compells them back to the Oregon town where they served, they find themselves, once again, thrust into one another's lives. As old feelings begin to surface they find themselves again facing difficult choices. If they pursue their desire to be together, RJ and Chris risk hurting the ones they care about as they embark on a spiritual journey to discover love, freedom, and happiness.
Choma is an untouchable bonded-labourer in a village who is working along with his family for a landlord, as he belongs to a backward class. Due to his social status, he is not allowed to till his own land, something that he desires most. Though he managed to rear a pair of bullocks that he found straying in the forest, he cannot use them to till the land. He comes in contact of Christian missionaries who try to convert him giving him the lure of the land, but Choma does not want to let go of his faith. He releases the fury that fate has beset on him, by beating his drum.
During the Boer War, three Australian lieutenants are on trial for shooting Boer prisoners. Though they acted under orders, they are being used as scapegoats by the General Staff, who hopes to distance themselves from the irregular practices of the war. The trial does not progress as smoothly as expected by the General Staff, as the defence puts up a strong fight in the courtroom.
A young priest, Father Chisholm is sent to China to establish a Catholic parish among the non-Christian Chinese. While his boyhood friend, also a priest, flourishes in his calling as a priest in a more Christian area of the world, Father Chisholm struggles. He encounters hostility, isolation, disease, poverty and a variety of set backs which humble him, but make him more determined than ever to succeed.
South Seas Romance
Valerie (Jaroslava Schallerová), a Czechoslovakian teenager living with her grandmother, is blossoming into womanhood, but that transformation proves secondary to the effects she experiences when she puts on a pair of magic earrings. Now seeing the world around her in a different light, Valerie must endure her sexual awakening while attempting to discern reality from fantasy as she encounters lecherous priest Gracian (Jan Klusák), a vampire-like stranger and otherworldly carnival folk.
Sometimes you find love where you'd least expect it. Just ask Lars, a sweet but quirky guy who thinks he's found the girl of his dreams in a life-sized doll named Bianca. Lars is completely content with his artificial girlfriend, but when he develops feelings for Margo, an attractive co-worker, Lars finds himself lost in a unique love triangle, hoping to somehow discover the real meaning of true love.
Norway in the 10th century. Askur, son of the powerful Thorgeir marries Embla, daughter of one of the few remaining landowners in Norway, in a pagan ceremony. King Olav, a ruthless christian, wants to eredicate all traces of non-christian beliefs and captures the two of them during the ceremony. In order to free Embla, Askur must go to Iceland and convert the people there to catholicism.
Daniela, raised in the bosom of a strict Evangelical family and recently unmasked as a fornicator by her shocked parents, struggles to find her own path to spiritual harmony.
Allie Fox, an American inventor exhausted by the perceived danger and degradation of modern society, decides to escape with his wife and children to Belize. In the jungle, he tries with mad determination to create a utopian community with disastrous results.
Paradise Found is a biography about the painter Paul Gauguin. Focusing on his personal conflict between citizen life and his family life and the art scene in Frane. In an incredible imagery montage Gauguin manages to make a successful living in the South Pacific, while being in opposition to France.
A British soldier escapes from 1880s Khartoum and goes down the Nile river with a fellow soldier, a governess and the daughter of an emir.
Stanley is about to get a sex change operation that will finally allow him to actually be what he’s already been in his mind for a long time: a woman. Yet before this happens she suddenly runs into her son who ends up coming for the trip across the United States.
In Africa early in World War II, a British rubber plantation executive reminisces about his arrival in the Congo in 1910. He tells the story of a love-hate triangle involving Harry Witzel, an in-country station superintendent who'd seen it all, Langford, a new manager sent from England for a four-year stint, and Tondelayo, a siren of great beauty who desires silk and baubles. Witzel is gruff and seasoned, certain that Langford won't be able to cut it. Langford responds with determination and anger, attracted to Tondelayo because of her beauty, her wiles, and to get at Witzel. Manipulation, jealousy, revenge, and responsibility play out as alliances within the triangle shift.
Battle Hymn was inspired by the true story of American minister Dean Hess, played here with rare sensitivity by Rock Hudson. A bomber pilot during World War II, Hess inadvertently releases a bomb which destroys a German orphanage. Tortured by guilt, Hess relocates in Korea after the war to offer his services as a missionary. Combining the best elements of Christianity and Eastern spiritualism, Hess establishes a large home for orphans. The preacher's efforts are threatened when the Korean "police action" breaks out in 1950. Battle Hymn was one of several collaborations between Rock Hudson and director Douglas Sirk--though Sirk felt that Robert Stack would have been better suited to the role of Rev. Hess.
The Spanish missionary reaches Kattinga Santiago Hernandez, India, to succeed Father Daniel, seriously ill and died several days later. Sandem, dealer and usurer lends money to the Indians, who are forced to work as slaves in a mine when they can not pay their debts. To end this situation, Father James is responsible for the debts of the whole tribe. But when due on promissory note signed, Sandem demands money. In these circumstances, begin to reach the Indian village suffering from plague.
Javier Mendoza a Catholic missionary established in Alaska, recalls, when about to die, the years of his youth and his relationship with his family and friends.
Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965), the mission doctor, theologian and philosopher who founded a hospital in the rainforests of Gabon, achieved sainthood in his lifetime, at least in the popular imagination. The critical assessment of his life and works in recent years, however, has been slightly more ambivalent. Ba Kobhio Bassek is the first director to examine this medical missionary from a purely African point-of-view.
On her honeymoon on a ship the daughter of a rich plant owner realizes that she's not happy with her marriage. She meets a poor woman on the way to meet her future husband, a missionary in India. The women decide to swap roles...
Two young and attractive social workers/nuns bring fresh air into a city missionary station, but are also challenged by lust and money, offered by a millionaire.
In a small North Korean village near the border of China, there are believers who get together in an underground church, away from the eyes of the persecuting government. When the missionary from China, their only support route, is cut off, things begin to get very tense. Chulho, who had been arrested along with his wife, returns. After losing his wife in the interrogations, Chulho had been released and unseen for 2 years before coming back to his home, claiming that he had been commanded by God to lead the believers across the border and into South Korea. The brothers wonder if Chulho is trustworthy, and whether it is the right thing to do to leave their homeland.
Eighteen years after (1995) Lee Jang-ho returns to the screen with this drama about a missionary group abducted by Islamic rebels. In fear for their lives the group slowly sees their faith in each other slip away.
As part of the Willie Handcart Company, Levi Savage (Jasen Wade) feared that leaving late in the season would lead to despair and death. What he came to find out is that for every tragedy, there is a multitude of miracles. Based on unbelievable actual events, and brought to you by filmmaker T.C. Christensen (Praise to the Man, The Work and the Glory), 17 Miracles will open your eyes to the stories of the Mormon Pioneers as you have never seen them before. Something extraordinary is about to happen.
An Indian aristocrat Rama Safti (Tyrone Power) returns from medical training in the U.S. to give his life to the poor folk of Ranchipur. Lady Edwina (Myrna Loy) and her drunken artist ex-lover Ransome (George Brent) get in the way, but everyone shapes up when faced by plague, earthquakes and flooding.
The story chronicles the life of St. Filippo Neri, but the film begins with the saint as an adult, came to Rome in order to embark for the Indies with the missionaries of St. Ignazio di Loyola, but since the board has already taken place, there is more room. Desolate, he walks the streets of Rome, intervened to remove a band of orphans who beat up a man. The man, in gratitude, takes him home and offered him the post of tutor to his son Michele.
Only a few songs as Elvis plays it straight as Dr John Carpenter. Mary Tyler Moore stars opposite as an incognito nun with a mission to help Dr Elvis clean up the ghetto he lives in. Can the King compete against God for Mary's heart?
Recreating the one-man show he starred in on Broadway, Hal Holbrook portrays Mark Twain as a 70-year old humorist who skewers politicians, newspapermen and so-called patriots in this 90 minute monologue. Holbrook adapted Twain's own words for a commentary on slavery, religion and politics, mixing the satire with comic yarns about life on the Mississippi and a very effective ghost story. The show's highlight are the lengthy passages from "Huckleberry Finn".
In 1905, after 10 years of missionary work in Africa, the Rev. Charles Fortesque is recalled to England, where his bishop gives him his new assignment - to minister to London's prostitutes
Two missionaries (Bud Spencer and Terence Hill) come into conflict with the authorities when they turn their missionary into a parrot farm. The Bishop of Maracaibo calls them his 'black sheep' and the Monsignore has been called to check on their behavior. Like usual, our heroes help the poor to defend themselves and provoke some funny fist fights in the process. (from Wikipedia)
A teenage fugitive with an incredible secret races to stay one step ahead of the mysterious forces seeking destroy him in this sci-fi action thriller. With three dead and one on the run, the race to find the elusive Number Four begins. Outwardly normal teen John Smith never gets too comfortable in the same identity, and along with his guardian, Henri, he is constantly moving from town to town. With each passing day, John gains a stronger grasp on his extraordinary new powers, and his bond to the beings that share his fantastic fate grows stronger.
After a lifetime of dreaming of traveling the world, 78-year-old homebody Carl flies away on an unbelievable adventure with Russell, an 8-year-old Wilderness Explorer, unexpectedly in tow. Together, the unlikely pair embarks on a thrilling odyssey full of jungle beasts and rough terrain.

© Valossa 2015–2024