In April 1909, Bioscope reported that Mr Leopold Sutto, ‘the representative in Australia of Messrs. Pathé Frères, London and Paris’, was on his way back to Paris with a ‘fine batch of negatives’ after an expedition to the Solomon Islands, New Guinea and other South Sea Islands (Bioscope, 29 April 1909, 21). The Oxford Companion to Australian Film offers further information on this trip, explaining that Pathé had informed the Australian Government in June 1908 of its plan to send out a ‘South Seas and Australian Expedition’. The crew comprised Sutto, and cameramen Herault and Hans Theyer (McFarlane, Mayer and Bertrand, 1999, 112).

Sutto described the ‘hardships’ that he and his party experienced in the Solomons. ‘People who stay at home can have no idea of the difficulties which an expedition such as ours had to encounter. Remember’, he continued, ‘we had first of all to persuade the Solomon Islanders, who are practically savages, that we did not mean to harm them, and this was no easy task. It was the first time in the history of the cinematograph that such an expedition had been attempted. We were amongst cannibals yet we went further than any white man had been before’ (Bioscope, 29 April 1909, 21). Sutto reiterated to the press the dangers that they faced – ‘the natives were always a factor to be reckoned with’ – while newspaper reports told of previous massacres (one involving an Austrian baron in 1896 and another shortly before the crew’s arrival). ‘The worst’ Sutto concluded, ‘was that no good road exists, and we had to walk for days in the rivers. The banks were so thickly covered with trees that they were impassable’ (Bioscope, 29 April 1909, 21).

The Pathé expedition to the Solomon Islands coincided with the much-publicised voyage of the American author, Jack London, who visited as part of a two-year expedition. Indeed, London met with the film crew and even featured in one of their pictures, as ‘one of the fakirs who defended the hut’ during a ‘fake attack on a white man’s camp’. Newspaper reports provide a synopsis for this film. ‘The natives creep in the hut, fire it and though the inmates make a gallant defence they are all speared to death in the course of a demoniacal scene. M. Sutto was assured by the natives that the method adopted was just how they do perform such deeds in reality’ (Feilding Star, 16 January 1909, 2). A further report explained that in the film, London was ‘speared as he gallantly faces a murderous horde of blacks’ (Taranaki Herald, 10 December 1908, 4).

Also on board London’s boat, the Snark, was Martin Johnson, whose films of exploration in Africa and the South Pacific would become hugely popular and influential over the next three decades. Johnson wrote about the experiences in his 1913 book Through the South Seas with Jack London. He explained that on arriving back at Penduffryn ‘we found the traders organising to make a trip into the interior of the island, to make moving pictures among the real cannibals’ (Johnson, 1913, 329). The three filmmakers had been sent from Paris to ‘make pictures of the American fleet in Sydney’ – which had arrived on 20 August 1908 – and then set off to the Solomon Islands. ‘We went up the Balesuna River six miles’, Johnson added, ‘to a village named Charley after a native who had once worked on the Penduffryn plantation. This was the first time a white man had ever set foot in the interior of the island of Guadalcanar. We were gone some time, and secured some very unique and interesting pictures’ (Johnson, 1913, 330, 331). Film historian Kevin Brownlow suggested that Johnson learnt a lot about filmmaking during this expedition – ‘the Frenchmen showed him how to thread and how to crank, and when all three were stricken with fever [malaria], Martin took over’ (Brownlow, 1979, 467). Johnson bought a print of the footage filmed in the Solomon Islands and in 1912 presented it as part of Jack London’s Adventure’s in the South Seas.

Jack London’s experiences in the South Seas fuelled much of his subsequent writing, most notably Adventure(1911), which tells the story of an English plantation owner and the only white man on the Solomon Islands, as he faces rebellion from the local slave workers. London presented the Solomon Islands as a land of cannibals, head-hunters and white pirates seeking slave labour on the Australian copra plantations. His views on the islands are neatly summarised in The Cruise of the Snark. ‘If I were a king’, he wrote, ‘the worst punishment I could inflict on my enemies would be to banish them to the Solomons. On second thought, king or no king, I don’t think I’d have the heart to do it’ (London, 1913, 282-283).

On returning to Australia, Sutto told the press that ‘we only took five pictures in all, and it was terrible work. The public thinks a picture is easily taken. We have to think out every detail; but I venture to say that these five pictures will be found to be of unique interest’ (Bioscope, 29 April 1909, 21). Catching Fish with the Aid of Dynamite in the Solomon Isles was reviewed in Bioscope in July 1909, where it was praised for its ‘charming scenes of Melanese life’ (Bioscope, 29 July 1909, 26). The film was listed under its French title in the Pathé catalogue in August 1909 and featured in Kinema (Bousquet, 1993, 200). It also played in Australia and New Zealand. For example, the Poverty Bay Herald in Gisborne, New Zealand, listed the film as part of a programme of Pathé pictures playing locally at His Majesty’s Theatre. The paper described it as ‘a beautiful coloured film’ (Poverty Bay Herald, 10 February 1910, 7).