THE SEARCH FOR MICHAEL ROCKEFELLER (review)

Review by Joshua Gravel

“I think I can make it…”

Those are the last confirmed words of Michael Rockefeller to anthropologist René Wassing when their catamaran capsized and Rockefeller swam to shore on November 19th, 1961.

The Search For Michael Rockefeller documents Milt Machlin’s attempts to find Rockefeller or at least to confirm his fate and is told through a combination of Machlin’s own 16mm travel footage and readings from various interviews and accounts of other anthropologists, missionaries, and travelers of the time.


The Search For Michael Rockefeller explains how after graduating from Harvard, Rockefeller joined an expedition to Dutch New Guinea in order to study tribal artistic customs and acquire examples of their art for museums.  Despite his family’s fortune,  his passion lay with studying and trading with these tribes.

After a successful trip, it was his return expedition that would be his last. Fraser Clarke Heston explores the different rumors and theories surrounding Rockefeller’s disappearance for this documentary.

The three main theories being that Rockefeller may have drowned while attempting to swim to shore, that he may be living with a tribe either voluntarily or as a captive, or that he may have hit land in a less friendly area where he may have been killed and eaten.


The Search For Michael Rockefeller is a really interesting documentary that provides a comprehensive overview of the aftermath, confusion, conflicting accounts, and rumors that surrounded the Rockefeller disappearance. The movie provides varying points of view and presents some information to potentially support all of the theories but I feel that the viewer will leave the experience with a conclusion in mind.

I would highly recommend The Search For Michael Rockefeller to anyone who doesn’t know a lot about this incident, documentary fans, and for those who may remember these events and want to see if their own theories can be substantiated.

Also this documentary would be of special interest to fans of the Italian produced jungle adventure cannibal films of the 1970’s and 1980’s such as Man From Deep River, Jungle Holocaust, and even Cannibal Holocaust as these real life events were some of the main inspiration to that entire sub-genre of exploitation films.