Infierno en la tierra

Set during the Japanese invasion of China, an American photographer named "Johnny 'Bugsy' Williams" (George Montgomery) has been captured and put in a jail cell. As luck would have it he gets help from a Canadian mercenary "Bull Weed" (Victor McLaglen) and a beautiful female named "Fifi" (Lynn Bari) and manages to escape in an airplane that just happens to have been fueled and ready for takeoff. When he gets to Mandalay he meets up with another beautiful woman named "Haoli Young" (Gene Tierney) and falls in love with her. Unfortunately, events take on their own life and things don't go according to plan. At any rate, rather than spoil the movie for those who haven't seen it I will just say that this is an average grade B war movie filmed during World War II. The acting was barely adequate and while Gene Tierney was attractive she was less than convincing as a half-Chinese school teacher. But there weren't many Oriental actresses in Hollywood during this time so I suppose she was as qualified as anybody else for the part.

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.

The beginning is really convoluted, with the way Ms. Haoli (Gene Tierney) allows a complete stranger to carry her package, this after having told him it was glass vases worth over $15,000! The whole falling in love etc was also contrived. But one can look past all this (after all, it was the charming way they often made movies in the 1940s, in order not to waste time and precious film reel!) because, whenever Gene Tierney is onscreen, whichever the film, she truly elevates the quality by her simple presence. With no offense meant to Jaclyn Smith, Gene Tierney had to be the most beautiful woman Hollywood has ever filmed! Not only that, she was a magnificent actress. She was very underrated and should have been way more famous, certainly way more than many of her era who were neither lookers nor could act (Bette Davis, I'm looking at you here!) I have been very disappointed by most stars from the Golden Age but Gene delivers every time.

The other stunning presence here is delivered by the little Indian boy, Chandu (or Gunga Din, as the character played by Robert Montgomery's unbrother George nicknames him). He steals every scene, he is adorable. His eyes are sparkling and light up every time his disarming smile brightens up his handsome face. I looked him up, wondering if he made a successful career back home, in Bollywood. Imagine my shock and horror when I learned that that was none other than Baretta's murdering protagonist, Robert Blake. Hmm....

There is one man (character Jujubi or something like that) who is evidently trying for an impression of Sydney Greenstreet. Similar bearing, dressed all in white, sits the same way, same gravitas and pauses in delivering his lines. Can't be a coincidence! This being 1942, the year of Casablanca, I wonder how the original took it. (Maybe they couldn't afford him and went for a knockoff?) He's also a pretty good addition, here.

Anyway, the ending is disappointing, and part of why I don't give it an 8/10. I expected a Gene living happily together with George and the little cute Indian boy. Alas, that was not to be. (You'll have to find out by watching what happens to each and everyone of them.) Nevertheless, this movie is much better than most B movies of that era starring lesser and very boring (but more famous) actresses than Gene Tierney. This reminds me to watch everything she ever starred in. Well worth my time, and I hope you'll find her very worth yours too. Gene's performance is a 10/10 (as is Robert Blake's) but the movie is only a 7/10 (and would probably have been a 4/10 without the lady!)

I'm a big fan of George Montgomery films--and he looks rugged & handsome, as always, in this one. Both Gene Tierney & Lynn Bari fall in love with him and, frankly, who can blame them. He plays an American newsreel cameraman in Burma & China just prior to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. After escaping from a Japanese prison, he goes to Mandalay where he meets & falls in love with Gene Tierney. He has a booklet containing some vital military info--so there are spy's on his trail. George Montgomery had a long Hollywood career & he was always interesting to watch (and,frankly, I see little comparison between him & Mr. Gable

Probably "China Girl" is a movie for cinephiles (I'm not one of them, though). Hathaway is a high-level film-maker, McLaglen, Montgomery, Lynn Bari, Ruman are gifted and nice actors. The black-and-white photography is beautiful: the scenes inside the colonial hotel are indeed very evocative. Even the plot is better than one may expect and presents a noble finale. At any rate, it is so pleasant to see a film with no beastly violence and trash talk which are routine in current movies. Of course, for us happy people Gene Tierney's fans, the main recommendation for "China Girl" is the presence of our Goddess of Love and Beauty. Beyond her incomparable beauty and loveliness, Gene shows her usual (underrated) talent as an actress: with her sad dreaming eyes, her rare sweet smiles, her refusal to give way to love, even her bravery in sharing her unhappy people's sufferences, she instills in the audience the foreboding of her bitter fate.