After many, many years I saw again this beautiful love story, thinking about how would I, half a century after, react to a film which made so many girls cry and sigh at that time, when I was just an male adolescent trying to understand women's behaviors, in a small city in Brazil.
This time, however, what caught my attention in the film was something very different, namely the insistence with which the physician Dr. Han Suyin (Jennifer Jones) makes clear to the journalist Mark Elliott (William Holden) her special ethically condition as an Eurasian. In fact, she is constantly putting emphasis on this point in their relationship, repeating she is willing to assume her love for him and carry it on in a "occidental way", provided that, by doing so, she is not betraying her Chinese side. Its seems to the spectator that Suyin is eagerly making efforts to establish a very subtle conciliation between those two unstable and opposite aspects of her culture, for they will immediately engage in overt conflict in her mind at a minimum failure in her attempts to control them.
Therefore, Suyin's attitudes always leave poor Elliott – a determined, brave and extremely practical man – anxious and perplexed, without knowing how much importance to give to her words. For him, whose love for her is plain and simple, the situation is totally clear: if we love each other, let us make a couple and begin immediately a life together. "Not so fast", is what she seems, verbally and non-verbally, to answer him all the time.
In fact, Suyin's Chinese portion would never allow her such a level of pragmatism. And, as she goes on and on reinforcing this much aimed equilibrium between those two worlds inside herself, she also frequently signals to him that also a very peculiar trait of Chinese culture is deeply rooted in her mind, namely the constant "raids" on the real world by invisible beings from an spiritual or non-physical world. For Suyin is always alerting Elliott about how dangerous is life, not because of any objective and concrete threat (as would be the perpetuation of the English colonialism or the eminence of a Japanese invasion), but due to the threats of plenty of cruel and harmful gods and other mystical and mythical beings over the poor, fearful and vulnerable human beings.
In fact, it looks like a whole bunch of Chinese deities are permanently on the watch to make people's life totally miserable. Because of that, mothers must dress their precious male babies in girls clothes, so that they are not taken away by jealous gods; everyone should always be ready to make loud noises to send the clouds away, in order to avoid their covering the sight of the moon; peasants are advised that they should shout loudly "The rice is bad! The rice is bad!" to protect their crops from being stolen by deities; and, in a funeral, it is recommended that the dead's family be isolated from the other people by curtains, so that the gods don't take advantage of their sorrow and fragility.
In other words, Suyin introduces us to a culture in which the supernatural has a real existence, as if a rather disturbing pantheon of malign and sadistic gods are always on the verge of negatively interfering with the most banal acts in anyone's daily life.
As the story takes place in Hong Kong in 1949, it should be clear that China really was, at that time, almost a semi-feudal society, while the country from which Elliott had come from was not yet dominated by the fierce capitalism that, launched by the USA after the first oil shock in 1973, took charge of the whole world. Therefore, at least in one aspect, both sides of Suyin's Eurasian personality were still much more innocent than they would be today.
A lot of History came into being since those old days. As to China, the main fact is that, after several phases of a communist regime, the country finally reached, in the last two decades, the condition of a very aggressive economy much more properly described as State capitalism. And, what happened to that old spirituality that so much enthralled Suyin in Hong Kong, in 1949, and with which she used to impress so much an impassioned Elliott, under that tree on the hill behind the hospital? It is gone, completely gone! In brief, if that story took place today, Elliott would not find it necessary to go to China to propose to Suyin in the presence of the Third Uncle and her entire family. In fact, both men would now be incomparably closer to one another, in their huge pragmatism, talking business as usual!
This time, however, what caught my attention in the film was something very different, namely the insistence with which the physician Dr. Han Suyin (Jennifer Jones) makes clear to the journalist Mark Elliott (William Holden) her special ethically condition as an Eurasian. In fact, she is constantly putting emphasis on this point in their relationship, repeating she is willing to assume her love for him and carry it on in a "occidental way", provided that, by doing so, she is not betraying her Chinese side. Its seems to the spectator that Suyin is eagerly making efforts to establish a very subtle conciliation between those two unstable and opposite aspects of her culture, for they will immediately engage in overt conflict in her mind at a minimum failure in her attempts to control them.
Therefore, Suyin's attitudes always leave poor Elliott – a determined, brave and extremely practical man – anxious and perplexed, without knowing how much importance to give to her words. For him, whose love for her is plain and simple, the situation is totally clear: if we love each other, let us make a couple and begin immediately a life together. "Not so fast", is what she seems, verbally and non-verbally, to answer him all the time.
In fact, Suyin's Chinese portion would never allow her such a level of pragmatism. And, as she goes on and on reinforcing this much aimed equilibrium between those two worlds inside herself, she also frequently signals to him that also a very peculiar trait of Chinese culture is deeply rooted in her mind, namely the constant "raids" on the real world by invisible beings from an spiritual or non-physical world. For Suyin is always alerting Elliott about how dangerous is life, not because of any objective and concrete threat (as would be the perpetuation of the English colonialism or the eminence of a Japanese invasion), but due to the threats of plenty of cruel and harmful gods and other mystical and mythical beings over the poor, fearful and vulnerable human beings.
In fact, it looks like a whole bunch of Chinese deities are permanently on the watch to make people's life totally miserable. Because of that, mothers must dress their precious male babies in girls clothes, so that they are not taken away by jealous gods; everyone should always be ready to make loud noises to send the clouds away, in order to avoid their covering the sight of the moon; peasants are advised that they should shout loudly "The rice is bad! The rice is bad!" to protect their crops from being stolen by deities; and, in a funeral, it is recommended that the dead's family be isolated from the other people by curtains, so that the gods don't take advantage of their sorrow and fragility.
In other words, Suyin introduces us to a culture in which the supernatural has a real existence, as if a rather disturbing pantheon of malign and sadistic gods are always on the verge of negatively interfering with the most banal acts in anyone's daily life.
As the story takes place in Hong Kong in 1949, it should be clear that China really was, at that time, almost a semi-feudal society, while the country from which Elliott had come from was not yet dominated by the fierce capitalism that, launched by the USA after the first oil shock in 1973, took charge of the whole world. Therefore, at least in one aspect, both sides of Suyin's Eurasian personality were still much more innocent than they would be today.
A lot of History came into being since those old days. As to China, the main fact is that, after several phases of a communist regime, the country finally reached, in the last two decades, the condition of a very aggressive economy much more properly described as State capitalism. And, what happened to that old spirituality that so much enthralled Suyin in Hong Kong, in 1949, and with which she used to impress so much an impassioned Elliott, under that tree on the hill behind the hospital? It is gone, completely gone! In brief, if that story took place today, Elliott would not find it necessary to go to China to propose to Suyin in the presence of the Third Uncle and her entire family. In fact, both men would now be incomparably closer to one another, in their huge pragmatism, talking business as usual!