A 1935 ship docks at mystery's edge — what they filmed will haunt you.
The first Easter Island documentary, filmed in 1935 when the Belgian naval ship Mercator came to collect Drs. Henri Lavacherry and Alfred Métraux, who had arrived six months before to carry out archaeological and ethnological work. The film, directed with melodramatic gusto and featuring a full orchestral score by Maurice Jaubert (who also did the narration), shows islanders, the monuments, and a public dance. A theme of decay and decadence characterizes the film, the motif portrayed gruesomely by extensive close-ups of the inhabitants of the leper colony there at the time. The film suited a romantic image of a mysterious lost civilization, the survivors eking out a pitiful existence on a barren rock. (Grant McCall)
Score
Jaubert's orchestral narration — music that judges.
Cinematography
Moai footage, leper close-ups: beauty and exploitation collide.
Director
John Fernhout
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
The Mercator was a Belgian training ship; this 'expedition' was essentially a naval PR detour.
The 'mysterious lost civilization' trope here directly fed Thor Heyerdahl's later—and much more famous—Easter Island theories.
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