7. Donovan’s Reef<\/strong> A likeable cast (John Wayne, Lee Marvin,\u00a0\u00a0Elizabeth Allen, Jack Warden, Dorothy Lamour, and Cesar Romero) tell an overwhelmingly mediocre tale of romance, social bigotry, and corporate greed through the medium of action\/comedy.<\/p>\n Set in French Polynesia, but filmed in Hawaii, the film was the last time John Ford and John Wayne – a long established partnership – ever worked together.<\/p>\n Despite the unlikely three-way of Marvin, Wayne, and Ford, the film manages to rise above a very simple stream of messages (chiefly through the stunning Tecnicolor eye of the DP,\u00a0William H. Clothier).<\/p>\n Made for $2.2m (you can’t even make a Grand Tour episode for that, these days!), Donovan’s Reef just works.<\/p>\n It shouldn’t.<\/p>\n But it does.<\/p>\n
\nI grew up with this film as a child, but it doesn’t make it in to my Top Five Christmas Films on the merit of memory alone.<\/p>\n