Dorothy Dandridge’s third and final film with Harry Belafonte is a slow-burning tropical melodrama of star-crossed romance by blacklisted director Robert Rossen. Belafonte plays David Boyeur, a charismatic activist native to the fictional British colony of Santa Marta who is competing against immoral landowner Maxwell Fleury (James Mason) in upcoming elections while also having a tryst with the wealthy Mavis Norman (Joan Fontaine). Meanwhile, drugstore clerk Margot Seaton (Dandridge) strikes up a romance with English civil servant Denis Archer (John Justin). Stunningly filmed by Scope expert Freddie Young (Lawrence of Arabia), Island in the Sun’s depiction of interracial coupling, now tame, led to the film being vehemently protested throughout the American South.