55 Days at Peking (1963)

Diplomats, soldiers and other representatives of a dozen nations fend off the siege of the International Compound in Peking during the 1900 Boxer Rebellion. The disparate interests unite ... See full summary »

Director:

Nicholas Ray

Writers:

Robert Hamer (additional dialogue), Philip Yordan (screenplay),

Stars:

Charlton Heston, Ava Gardner, David Niven

Nominated for 2 Oscars. Another 2 wins & 1 nomination.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Charlton Heston	...	Maj. Matt Lewis
Ava Gardner	...	Baroness Natalie Ivanoff
David Niven	...	Sir Arthur Robertson
Flora Robson	...	Dowager Empress Tzu-Hsi
John Ireland	...	Sgt. Harry
Harry Andrews	...	Father de Bearn
Leo Genn	...	Gen. Jung-Lu
Robert Helpmann	...	Prince Tuan
Kurt Kasznar	...	Baron Sergei Ivanoff
Philippe Leroy	...	Julliard
Paul Lukas	...	Dr. Steinfeldt
Elizabeth Sellars	...	Lady Sarah Robertson
Massimo Serato	...	Garibaldi
Jacques Sernas	...	Maj. Bobrinski
Jerome Thor	...	Capt. Andy Marshall

Storyline

Diplomats, soldiers and other representatives of a dozen nations fend off the siege of the International Compound in Peking during the 1900 Boxer Rebellion. The disparate interests unite for survival despite competing factions, overwhelming odds, delayed relief and tacit support of the Boxers by the Empress of China and her generals.

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Plot Keywords:

china | empress | compound | city | dowager | 

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Taglines:

A handful of men and women held out against the frenzied hordes of bloodthirsty fanatics!

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Genres:

Drama | History | War

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Certificate:

Unrated

Details

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

7 August 1963 (France)

Also Known As:

55 Tage in Peking

Filming Locations:

Las Matas, Madrid, Spain

Box Office

Budget:

$17,000,000 (estimated)

Company Credits

Production Co:

Samuel Bronston Productions

Technical Specs

Runtime:

154 min

Sound Mix:

70 mm 6-Track (Westrex Recording System)

Color:

Color (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

2.20 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

In China at the time working as a professional mining engineer, future President of the United States, Herbert Hoover and his wife were civilians under siege at the foreign legations' compound. The future first Lady, Louise "Lou" Henry Hoover, collected shrapnel from Boxer artillery that is on display at the Presidential Library in West Branch, IA. The Hoovers picked up Mandarin Chinese while in China and used it at the White House when they didn't want to be overheard.

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Goofs

The British legation has a substantial military band as seen at the beginning of the movie with the raising of the Union Flag and at the end. The duties of a military band assigned to an embassy was perform at embassy functions. Consequently the British Legation would not have used a Chinese orchestra to perform British/European music at the British Ball, especially music well within the capacity of any British service band.

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Quotes

Dr. Steinfeldt: [in the hospital, while the baroness refuses medical assistance] Don't you want to live?
Baroness Natalie Ivanoff: I *have* lived!

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Connections

Featured in I'm a Stranger Here Myself (1975)

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Soundtracks

"So Little Time"
(The Peking Theme)
Recorded by Andy Williams on CBS Records
Words by Paul Francis Webster
Music by Dimitri Tiomkin

User Reviews

Spectacular and Enjoyable Epic

The fifties and early sixties were the golden age of the large-scale historical epic. Most of these dealt with either Biblical, Classical or Mediaeval history, but there was also a fashion for making movies on a similar epic scale dealing with more recent historical events. Many of these dealt with some aspect of European colonialism or with relations between Westerners and the inhabitants of some other part of the globe, such as "Bridge on the River Kwai", "Lawrence of Arabia", "Khartoum" or "Fifty-Five Days at Peking" which relates, from a Western viewpoint, the story of the Chinese Boxer Rebellion. My thanks are due to T R P Dean for his helpful review setting out the historical background to this event.

The film narrates the story of how the foreign residents of the Legation Quarter of Peking (it was obviously not the fashion to call it "Beijing" in 1963) managed to hold out for a siege of nearly two months in the summer of 1900 before being relieved by a multi-national expeditionary force. The main characters on the Western side are Major Lewis, the commander of the small detachment of American marines in Peking, and Sir Arthur Robertson, the British ambassador. The main characters on the Chinese side, although we see less of that side, are the Dowager Empress Tzu-Hsi and her counsellors, the devious and anti-foreigner Prince Tuan and the more liberal General Jung-Lu, who favours rapprochement with the foreigners.

There were a few things about the film that I did not like. Like a number of others, I felt that it would have been an improvement if the leading Chinese characters had not been portrayed by Western actors. I do not hold to any principle of political correctness that states that a character should not be portrayed by an actor of a different nationality, but in this particular case I felt that Chinese actors would have been more convincing. The action in the second half of the film tended to drag a bit, especially the episode where the Westerners make a raid to destroy the Boxers' arsenal. The decision to add some love-interest in the form of a romance between Lewis and a Russian princess was definitely a mistake. Charlton Heston was generally fine as an action hero but less convincing, as here, as a romantic one. Ava Gardner's performance as Princess Natasha was very much below par; there is little passion in the scenes between her and Heston.

I do not, however, agree with the criticism that the film should have showed more of the historic background to the Boxer Rebellion. The aim was to make an epic adventure story about one particular episode during that rebellion; to have attempted to explore the complexities of Chinese politics during the years leading up to it would have resulted in a very lengthy and tedious film, especially if the filmmakers had tried to include reference to events as remote in time as the Opium Wars, as some have suggested. In the main, that aim was a successful one. At the centre of the film are two fine contributions, particularly from David Niven as Robertson. Robertson is the Westerners' equivalent of Jung-Lu, a liberal by the standards of his period who (unlike many of the other Europeans) hopes to avoid war by taking a conciliatory attitude towards the Chinese. When war comes, he is forced to look inside himself to find reserves of courage and stoicism. Apart from his scenes with Gardner, Heston is also good as Lewis, the tough man of action. Although he is a very different character from Robertson, the two men discover a respect for each other as the crisis brings them together. The spectacular action scenes were mostly well done, and the costumes and architecture of this period of Chinese history were reproduced on a grand scale. Despite a few faults, this was a film that I enjoyed. 7/10