China Girl (1942)

User Rating:

6.6/10   

Director:

Henry Hathaway

Writers:

Ben Hecht (writer)
Darryl F. Zanuck (story)

Release Date:

9 December 1942 (USA)

Genre:

Drama

Tagline:

Captain Fifi...115 pounds of curses, crookedness and kisses!

Plot Keywords:

Beautiful Woman

Cast

Gene Tierney	...	Miss Haoli Young
George Montgomery	...	Johnny 'Bugsy' Williams
Lynn Bari	...	Captain Fifi
Victor McLaglen	...	Major Bull Weed
Alan Baxter	...	Flyer Bill Jones
Sig Ruman	...	Jarubi
Myron McCormick	...	Shorty McGuire
Robert Blake	...	Chandu - Hindu boy (as Bobby Blake)
Ann Pennington	...	Sugar Fingers, the Entertainer (scenes deleted)
Philip Ahn	...	Dr. Kai Young
Tom Neal	...	Captain Haynes
Paul Fung	...	Japanese Governor
Lal Chand Mehra	...	Desk Clerk
Kam Tong	...	Japanese Doctor

Runtime:

USA:95 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (Western Electric Recording) | Mono

Certification:

Finland:K-16 | Sweden:15

Company:

Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation

Soundtrack:

Put Your Arms Around Me, Honey (I Never Knew Any Girl Like You)

A thoroughly mediocre relic

I'm a big Gene Tierney fan, so I tuned into this one with some eagerness, hoping to see a film that captured pre-WWII tensions in SE Asia and gave the luscious actress some room to shine. And while Gene does have a few moments of brilliance, the rest of the film is a mish-mash of good and bad elements. The whole is somewhat less than satisfying.

My biggest problem is that this film doesn't really know what it wants to be: action movie, spy/war thriller, romance, drama, or anti-Japanese war propaganda. The script tries to be all things to all people and ends up satisfying no one. Plot elements are left hanging unresolved. One line of tough guy dialog is followed by another trying to stir hearts about the plight of the Chinese nationalists. What a mess! George Montgomery is a poor man's Clark Gable, and he's almost a caricature in this film - tough guy only looking out for himself who falls hard for a "dame" caught up in the mess that was China and Burma in 1941. Though Tierney gets top billing, it's really Montgomery's film, and he's not up to carrying it. He's pretty good at the action stuff, but he's lost in the romantic scenes. Plus, his comedic timing is way off. It doesn't help him that the screenwriter gave him some terribly cheesy dialog.

There is little depth to any of the supporting cast, although Robert Blake gives a scene-stealing performance as a young Burmese kid (of all things) that pals around with our hero in Mandalay.

There are some good elements here - some exotic shots that appear to be on location (if they're backlot, they fooled me), and a wonderful set in the hotel in Mandalay. The action scenes often move well. The movie doesn't pull punches, either - we see Chinese civilians being mowed down by Japanese machine guns, and our hero crawls across a ditch of dead bodies in an early escape scene. This is more grim than I expected from a film more than 60 years old, and it's effectively done.

But overall, I can't recommend this film to hardly anyone. There are better films about Japanese brutality in SE Asia during WWII ("Bridge on the River Kwai" or "Objective, Burma") and certainly better films for Tierney fans (my recs - "Laura", "The Ghost and Mrs. Muir", and "Leave Her to Heaven"). Give this one a pass and consign it to the history books.