The Hawaiians, released in the UK as Master of the Islands, is a 1970 United States historical epic based on the 1959 novel Hawaii by James A. Michener.
Starring Charlton Heston at the head of an ensemble cast, the two and one-half hour saga was directed by Tom Gries from a screenplay by James R. Webb.
Forty years after the events in the film Hawaii, sea captain Whip Hoxworth returns to Oahu with the Corinthian’s hold full of Chinese laborers.
En route from China, the attractive young Hakka woman Bong Nyuk Tsin had been discovered among the all male Chinese immigrants.
Some time later Mun Ki takes the pregnant Bong Nyuk Tsin to a local Chinese wiseman, who forecasts her bearing five sons.
In spite of this boon Whip's relatives refuse to finance his raising sugar cane, insisting it will still fail under his feckless stewardship.
The doctor raises the prospect of post-natal depression, but ventures her seeming mental decline stemming instead from generations of inbreeding among her royal Hawaiian ancestors.
Whip produces a seed pineapple that had been smuggled out of French Guiana, and gives the nearly-dead husk to Wu Chow's Auntie to care for.
With Whip's help, Wu Chow's Auntie is reunited with her sons, now educated young adults beginning to make their own ways in life.
Whip will buy up distressed but highly valuable real estate on the cheap, and loan Wu Chow's Auntie the money to rebuild her family’s homes and properties.
Writing for The New York Times, Roger Greenspun called it a "movie with reasonable claims to having something for almost everybody", with "spectacle" that proceeds with "efficient and attractive modesty"; he complimented the director's craftsmanship and highlighted the performances of John Phillip Law and Charlton Heston, but said "Geraldine Chaplin offers only a disturbing evocation of her father's face, without the other qualities of his presence.
[3] Time magazine was even less complimentary, saying "the plot is laced with the usual colonial tensions and pretensions: Hoxworth feuds with a polyglut of races while his pineapple princess (Geraldine Chaplin) goes quietly mad.
The Hawaiians was released on a home video format (DVD) on January 28, 2011 as part of the MGM Limited Edition Collection series.