Lîle de Pâques

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 closeups 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