Paixão Oriental

George Montgomery fits the bill quite well here as the moustachioed photo journalist "Johnny" who makes a living taking pictures from war zones. This time he's been posted to Burma where he finds himself amidst quite a conflict between the invading Japanese and the local resistance. The invaders want him to act as a spy for him, and demonstrate quite succinctly what they do to those who don't play ball. He's especially valuable as he is also a pilot, and so could photograph some quite strategic sites along the new Burma Road for them. His newly arrived cellmate "Weed" (Victor McLaglen) and he make a timely escape only for him to find that some documents he accidentally pinched from his interrogators actually have coded information that might prove crucial to the war effort. He's is distracted, however, by "Haoli" (Gene Tierney) who, after a distinctly rocky start, tells him something that will thoroughly change the dynamic of just about everything in this increasingly hostile territory. When she heads off to meet with her schoolteacher father he follows hoping to rescue her - but can he stay one step ahead of his pursuers and reach her in time? It takes a while to get going this, Montgomery is pretty wooden, McLaglen hasn't the jovial whisky-stained character to deliver and so a lot of this is left to an out of sorts Tierney - she isn't really the most convincing as a Chinese lass. Neither is Lynn Bari as the imaginatively duplicitous "Capt. Fifi", and the whole film tries rather statically to mix it's wartime espionage elements with some rather flat romantic ones. The pyrotechnics are quite effective, and it does give us an idea of just how brutal this theatre of the war was in the 1940s, but there's a surfeit of dialogue and we have to wait too long for most of the action. Some nice old cars and planes, though.

During the early days after America's entry into WWII, Hollywood cranked up the pro-war propaganda machine to both explain and justify our late participation and urgent need to catch up in the global battle against fascism. This pre-Pearl Harbor story concerns one he-man opportunist's efforts to juggle the bad guys and bad (?) girls with questionable motives. At times it looks like a film noir and other times a spy romance/melodrama, but with cynical dialogue by the master Ben Hecht and tough-guy direction by Henry Hathaway, this chop suey has enough meat and potatoes to satisfy. Example of the catchy language: George Montgomery says to sexy Lynn Bari, "I like you because you're everything a girl should be, 115 pounds of lies, venom and kisses." Another line has spy Victor McLaglen reporting the only Japanese he could translate from a secret document was the number 7 and the word Pearl!!! Oh - and the reason most folks will be watching - the China Girl, Gene Tierney is scrumptious!

Elaborate WW2 adventure follows a newsreel photographer's intrigues and romance in China and Burma. Although Ben Hecht's screenplay is lively with macho action and jingo dialogue, the women stand out: Gene Tierney looks ravishing , while Lynn Bari steals all her scenes by underplaying with a haunting edge. Much less successful is hero George Montgomery who apparently took Clark Gable lessons, projecting all the brashness but none of the humor. Victor McLaglen gives stolid support and Robert Blake is fine as an Indian child. The real attraction here is the production: exquisite Oriental decor, imaginative lighting, and some spectacular mayhem.

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.