Sitiados

Entrancing film that has high adventure, light-hearted comedy, and an offbeat romance with an oddball cast of characters. The most notable are the stars: Warner Baxter as the alcoholic down on his luck reporter, Alice Faye as the showgirl running from crime, and the multi-talented Charles Winninger as the noble head of a small American embassy under siege by a large band of Mongolian bandits. Good script, interesting complex characters, and fine performances make for an engrossing movie that has something to please every movie taste.

This somewhat routine action/romantic comedy from the late 1930's is still entertaining and the action sequences keep the viewer from becoming overly bored with the love scenes between Warner Baxter (Hank Topping!), a news hound on the skids, and Alice Faye (Emmy Jordan), a lady on the run.

The title is allegorical for several reasons including the on-going world dilemma concerning China and Japan, with the Chinese government being threaten from without and within. A curiosity is the partnership at the time between the United States and the Soviet Union with Alice Faye faining to be a Russian married to an American as a ruse to escape China.

The film has one of the cleverest lines of the decade delivered I believe by an uncredited performer, Jonathan Hale, playing the Assistant Secretary of State. When asked about the consulate head, Uncle Sam Cady (played with typical élan by character actor, Charles Winninger), who was appointed by President McKinley and has had a transfer request delayed since 1912, Hale replies, "At least now we've found the forgotten man."

Barricade finds Alice Faye without any songs as a refugee trying to flee China and without passport. She's in a heap of trouble, I won't say what exactly, and even American extraterritoriality won't help her out.

I mention that because one of the grievances that the Chinese including the bandits who attack the American mission in this story set deep in the Chinese interior was that particular institution whereby American citizens who committed crimes were tried by American courts set up by our consulates. We were far from the only country doing that however.

Anyway the story opens with her on a train for Shanghai trying to use a hokey Russian accent. The accent intrigues Warner Baxter who's pretty plastered.

Bandits however interrupt the journey and the two of them seek refuge in the American consulate presided over by Charles Winninger. He's the best one in the film and I only wish that a better story was given because I liked his character. He's a widower and a proud member of the consular service, appointed in 1900 by William McKinley. He requested a transfer ten years later and that's the last he was heard from. As Assistant Secretary of State Jonathan Hale aptly put it, he's the real forgotten man.

Baxter does all right in a role that someone like Clark Gable would have done in his sleep at MGM. The heroics would have come more natural to Gable than to Baxter as the mission is barricaded and defended against the bandits.

Alice Faye did have one number to sing. Why Alice's song was cut out, God and Zanuck only know. One thing I'm still trying to figure out is when the mission inhabitants take final refuge in the cellar with a trap door, just who was left upstairs to pull the rug over the cellar door?

Barricade had the potential to be a lot better than it was. But sloppy editing and lost faith in the project made 20th Century Fox release a project unfulfilled. Watching Barricade is like eating a badly cooked meal.

"Barricade" is set during the invasion of China by the Japanese in the late 1930s. During this time, the central government was in shambles and in some cases, local warlords took advantage of the chaos. This film is set in the hinterlands of China during this war, near the Mongolian border.

Alice Faye and Warner Baxter play Americans who have fallen on hard times. Hank (Baxter) is a disgraced newspaper correspondent and Emmy (Faye) is on the run from the law. Both end up in the middle of no where in China. They take refuge at the local US consulate, where they find a most unusual man in charge (Charles Winninger). Despite the threat from Mongolian bandits, the Consul is steadfast in opposing them...insisting the property is US territory. What's next for the folks? All I know is it sure looks dire for them.

The film is interesting in that Faye does a lousy Russian accent and folks keep noticing it's lousy! Had they believed it in the story, it would have made for a less credible film. As for the story, it's overly sentimental and a bit hard to believe....but it's also a rousing adventure story that still is worth seeing.

You may be interested to know that BARRICADE was viewed as a failure by the studio and shelved for a year before ALICE FAYE's popularity reached such a high that the studio decided to release the film despite the fact that it was never fully completed. It fared modestly OK at the box-office.

Faye refers to a murder during her nightclub stint in New York City--and this scene was actually in the script and was the way the film was to start. Instead, it is entirely missing and what could have been an exciting sequence (including a complete song number by Faye) was never filmed. However, the rest of the story is pretty much intact and made release of the film possible at a running time of 71 minutes.

A tired looking WARNER BAXTER is too old to be believable as Faye's romantic interest and is merely perfunctory as the broken down reporter. Audiences today would be offended by the depiction of Chinese using fractured English phrases like "Me likey make noisy". Key Luke is one of the Chinese loyalists but plays his role in a low-key, straightforward way. Arthur Treacher is all but invisible and yet gets fourth billing on screen due to editing changes in the story. Originally, Joseph Schildkraut had a role in the film but his part was eventually edited out.

A mishmash of a film that will serve as entertainment only for the most die-hard Alice Faye fans who will get a chance to see her in a dramatic role--albeit a weak one. Charles Winninger is totally wasted as a kindly man running the American consulate.

Despite all the weaknesses, there are a couple of scenes involving narrow escapes that are effectively played and Karl Freund's B&W photography is top notch.