Der Kommandant

Major Baldwin (Stewart) has his first command in East China when he is put in charge of a demolition squad with orders to evacuate once a base has been destroyed to prevent its capture by the advancing Japanese. Along the way he discovers the power associated with command and the abuse temptation offers along with such power. He also encounters some unexpected romance when the widow of a Chinese general in need of evacuation joins his squad.

Unfortunately, as the group never comes into contact with the Japanese and is never in serious danger, we don't feel a lot of tension. Whatever threat there is comes from the Chinese themselves, from mobs of starving peasants to bands of wayward deserting marauders.

The most interesting feature of the film deals with the difference of customs. The pomp and ceremony important to Chinese is alien to the Americans just wanting to get down to the business at hand. Looking from different points of view, each side views the other as somewhat barbarous and inhumane and as a result never quite reach the level of friendship each would have.

Although Jerome Morass provides a spirited music score, it doesn't quite fit in with the action, or rather the lack of it. With an exception or two, the events on the screen just never generate much pathos, resulting in a not so poignant anti-war film.

Stewart, as always, is worth watching, Lisa Lu has charm, and Harry Morgan gives a preview of what would become his Colonel Potter M*A*S*H* character.

The only film that World War II veteran James Stewart made during his career was one far away from his wartime experience flying missions over Germany in the European Theater. In fact it's the Chinese mainland theater which few have ever written about.

One of those who did was Theodore H. White who in the year before his first Making of the President books came out wrote the novel on which The Mountain Road is based. White was a correspondent during World War II and he covered this forgotten theater of the war where more time was spent in the quarrels with American commander Joseph Stilwell and Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek of the Kuomintang Nationalist Chinese forces than in actually fighting the Japanese.

The year is 1944 and the Japanese army is once again on the offensive and the Chinese are retreating deeper into their interior. Stewart heads an eight man army demolition team and he's destroying a whole lot of things useful to the advancing Japanese, scorching the Chinese earth for the invaders.

But he's in a country that the only things Americans know about it come from missionary tales, Pearl Buck novels, and Charlie Chan movies. Which would make Stewart's character no different than most of the rest of his countrymen. One of the people in his team is the Chinese speaking Glenn Corbett who's studied the language and culture.

In this war movie, we never see the Japanese. Stewart's big problems come from the mass of refugees heading west to escape the advancing Japanese. He's also dealing with conflicting orders, with Chinese commanders looking to evade responsibility, and some outright bandits who really don't care who wins the war.

Four of the team are killed and the reprisals Stewart takes cost him the affection of Lisa Lu, widow of a Chinese general who chose wrong politically and paid for it.

Actually the performance I liked best in the movie is that of Frank Silvera as a Chinese Kuomintang commander who actually does understand and sympathize with Stewart, but who also knows his people.

My guess is that James Stewart took this film because it's not a typical war film with no great combat scenes. It's about the responsibility of command in a war where you can't tell whom you should fear.

Still The Mountain Road drags in spots and comes to no real satisfactory conclusion. It's different, but because of that remains one of James Stewart's least known and viewed films.

Legendary American reporter Theodore H. White covered China in the 1940s, and he wrote the novel on which this unusual James Stewart feature is based. It's not quite anti-war, but it's a very long way from the flag-waving military movies that Stewart made in the 1950s.

Stewart's character is a U.S. military engineer working with a small team trying to slow a Japanese advance in China. Though there's plenty of action (especially explosions), the emphasis is on the Americans' interaction with their Chinese allies -- which is fraught with problems. Stewart's character has a local love interest, played by Lisa Lu, but their relationship is nothing like a conventional GI romance.

"The Mountain Road" was obviously meant to be a thought-provoking look back at World War II, and to audiences in the early 1960s it probably was. The climax may have been almost shocking. In today's more jaded world, the movie is likely to strike many viewers as dull, with an ending that resolves very little. But it you still have a rose-colored view of the "Greatest War," and think it was less morally messy than our current conflicts, this could be enlightening.

Intriguing wartime character studies. Outstanding characters abound. Stewart's romance with the Asian female lead is very poignant. Harry Morgan and Mike Kellin give outstanding character support - in fact the whole cast does, including a young James Best, looking hunky, well before his Dukes of Hazzard days.

The Mountain Road is the story of an American Enginers destroying military stockpile ahead of a Japanese advance in late World War II. The corrupted Chinese Warlords refused to equip their men for the fight against the Japaneses and wanted to hoard so they could profit from the sale of gasoline and military supplies. One of the themes of the movie is the cultural clash between Americans and Chineses. One of the major difference between the two was the value of human life. I wish that this movie was available on DVD or VHS tape as I would like to have it for my collection. It is well worth while seeing to see one aspect of World War II in China.