La porta della Cina

I was 17 and had just fallen hard in love with Gayle. That night in 1957 when I saw China Gate I was not with Gayle but another. The haunting title track "China Gate" somehow was burned into my memory. I remember little of the movie, but Nat's melancholy rendition was so haunting that when I replay it over in my mind some of that lost-love feeling still tears at my heart 42 years later.

On this evidence, Fuller is a strident and uncompromising anti-Communist anti-racist. You heard me. This is a late-50s movie about 'Indochina' - a little ahead of the curve there! - which takes the USA to task for not leaping right in there with their French pals; the enemy has Stalin all over the wall of their lookout posts. So it's more than a little silly, to put it nicely. But given this, the racial issues it confronts are above and beyond the call of duty - the espionage tour our heroes embark on is really an opportunity for dynamite expert Gene Barry to smarten up after abandoning his distinctly Asian-featured kid from his liaison with half-white Lucky Legs (Angie Dickinson). Along the way there are exciting scenes, surprisingly well-modulated performances, and a budget-conscious stylistic trick I've never seen before: shot almost entirely in wide master shot, Fuller constantly pans-and-scans the black-and-white Scope image to approximate camera movement. Here's a guy who's smart enough to know that grainy (not to mention silly) won't matter if the damn thing MOVES.

The film contains beautiful war scenery with buildings and parts of streets completely destroyed. The other part of the sets are jungle sets built in a studio where the film will take place at night.

The interest of the film is to show the war in Indochina led by the French. It is about a French army commando with an American who will try to destroy an arms depot to avoid that the French parts of Indochina are bombed by the communists.

This pretext allows Samuel Fuller to build an effective war film, but also to talk about subjects such as racism and psychological problems related to war.

Samuel Fuller does not show heroes, because none of the characters are heroes, except perhaps Angie Dickinson who plays an Indochinese woman who has had a child with an American. She helps the commando to get through the jungle to the communist village that houses the weapons.

One of the curiosities of the film is Lee Van Cleef in a very short role who plays the communist leader of the Indochinese. Curiosity, because it is a character with dialogues (his filmography has often used him in roles with few words).

Otherwise, the Samuel Fuller system works well: a mix of studio shots, real set shots, documentary stock shots, edited together; or else, the dialogues are ampouled at times, but they are effective. And a rather effective direction of actor who makes that each of the characters has its function. The whole thing works quite well and remains captivating until the end. Obviously one of the messages of the film is also to show the horror, the stupidity and the absurdity of war.

That is to say that we are not in the subtlety, the messages of Samuel Fuller are well inserted in a very insistent way so that the spectator captures them well.

All in all, the film remains very interesting, because there are very few films about French soldiers during the Indochina war!

I remember watching on TV as a teenager, little did I know that a few years later some of the scenes and some of the dangers pictured, one especially, when Goldie (Nate King Cole) stepped on a punji stick, that one day it would it be a real worry.

To this day, I will not watch any Nam war movies, even though China Gate was about the Indochina War with the French I would never watch again, as I said a few scenes would be too much and bring back memories. The reason I posted this was I just watched a short about Nat King Cole and it reminded me of that movie he was in. I had to read what others had posted about China Gate to see if others felt the same way. USMC, Nam, 68-69.

Overtly the master Samuel Fuller spotlight and approaching the mix-up of the ethnicities on some pictures for instance as "The Crimson Kimono", "House of Bamboo" and now "China Gate" all them prospecting this neuralgic issue, here exposing the American Sgt. Brock (Gene Barry) that was involved and married a half-breed China girl Lucy (Angie Dickinson) when she gets pregnant, the Sgt. Brock supposed that his son should be more Caucasian than Chinese, well the boy actually was born with a true Chinese kind, daunted he refuses the boy and soon disappears, Lucy comes into depression, on erratic life on prostitution and diving deeply on alcoholism, after seven years in absence the bleak Sgt. Brock was designed to a hard assignment at Indochina when he meets again the doll Lucy legs which she got the nickname for your beauty legs always allures the key persons thought her exotic beauty, also he meets his son, the French Army calls Lucy for a fair deal, if she guide the bomb squad at China Gate where the commies are storing a huge secret arsenal of bombs and guns underneath of the mountain, his son should be expatriate to America as American citizen, due his father really is, using several stock footage and almost shot at sound studio this movie has their enchants, touching in the racism, also enforces the virtue of democracy against the reds system, which the men weren't master of their own destiny, as far I remember Angie Dickinson was pretty than never, young and gorgeous, the famous and charismatic black singer Nat King Cole is another precious and colorful character, without forget the famous squad "The Big Red One" was quote for first time in this picture, that will be the smashing success and seminal masterpiece of Fuller on the future!!

Thanks for reading.

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First watch: 2020 / How many: 1 / Source: DVD / Rating: 7.25