China
Director: John Farrow
Year: 1943
Rating: 6.5
This is an effective
slice of war time propaganda that still resonates today. Most often film
propaganda from that period is too hip hooray America to take seriously now,
but this one works because America takes a backseat to the narrative and
three understated performances never over do it. The plot clearly has Casablanca
hanging over it with Alan Ladd as a stand-in for Bogart but as the title
indicates this one takes place in China and it is 1941. Early December 1941.
The Japanese are indiscriminately slaughtering the Chinese civilians. There
is a reference to the Nanjing Massacre as well as a plaudit thrown to Chiang
Kai-shek.
Jones (Alan Ladd) is an American in the
oil business in China with no allegiances or sense of morality. He is only
too happy to sell to the Japanese. 'I have some good friends in Tokyo". He
and his sidekick Johnny Sparrow (William Bendix) are in a small town on their
way to Shanghai in a truck when the Japanese bomb it from the air. It is
a remarkable 90 second unedited scene in which Sparrow runs through the town
with bombs going off all around him, people running for their lives and roofs
and debris falling into the street and director John Farrow tracking him
from a boat. Of course, they use Bendix for this scene and not the hero of
the film, Ladd. They were not going to chance hurting him. The female star
in the film, Loretta Young, later said of Ladd "He was a whiner and I hate
that". Of course, she was a huge star at the time and was upset that the
film was shifting more and more towards Ladd's character.
On the way to Shanghai they pick up an American
woman (Young) and unknown to Jones a group of female students in the back.
When he finds out he tries throwing them out until he is stopped by a Chinese
man holding a gun played by Victor Sen Young. Inevitably, after witnessing
the aftermath of a gang rape by the Japanese his sympathies change. "I just
lined up three men and killed them and I feel no more than I would if I had
killed three flies in a dung heap". No doubt a big applause line. He kills
a lot more. Some very brutally.
I guess the Code was not in effect if you
were killing Japanese. Among the cast of Chinese besides Sen Young are Philip
Ahn as an underground leader, Marianne Quon, Barbara Jean Wong as two of
the students, Richard Loo as a guerilla and Benson Fong as one as well. The
standout for me is the performance from Bendix, gentle, wide eyed and sympathetic.
When he talks of home, you can feel it in your bones. Very different from
the sadist in The Glass Key when he beats the hell out of Ladd. The two of
them were great friends in real life and were neighbors.
