O Homem que Destrói

This film portrays the lives of a US Army engineer squad in China during WW II. Their mission is to delay the advance of the Japanese Army. They must blow up bridges and ammo dumps along a long mountain road while dealing with a never ending line of Chinese refugees. James Stewart finds love with a beautiful Chinese widow. He must deal with his personal feelings toward a woman, a foreign people and the challenges of command. Not one of your best Jimmy Stewart movies but well worth a look.

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.

This is a rare film that criticizes the KMT in China's war with Japan in 1944. The KMT was fighting the CCP (Communists) at the same time they were fighting the Japanese. The CCP was fighting the Japanese as well. They are not even mentioned in the film. The Chinese Civil War started way before 1944. It was the KMT (Chiang Kai-Shek) against the CCP (Mao Zedong). It lasted until 1949, when the CCP finally won when the KMT retreated to Taiwan. The film itself, though, has some problems. There is really not too much suspense or tension in the film. Stewart is really miscast (he was more comfortable in Air Force films) as a demolition man. Harry Morgan is very good though, as is the rest of the cast, who rescue the film from Stewart. Other than Flying Tigers, I cannot remember one other well-made film about the Chinese in WW 2. Empire of the Sun was very good, but it was not really about China. The Last Emperor was very good, but it was more about Puyi than the Chinese in WW2. At least this film marks a shift away from the stereotypical portrayal of the Chinese we had seen in films prior to 1960. There were still a few stereotypes, but not as many as before. Interesting film.

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.

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.