State Department: File 649

You wouldn't expect a cold war drama with a title like that to be in colour, but here it is. (Soviet propaganda films of the period were also often in colour believe it or not.) Art director Edward Jewell also otherwise manages to suggest fairly lavish production values on a limited budget and the film was presumably waved through by the Breen Office as being politically useful in the grim new postwar climate (people get their tongues cut out and arms cut off - mercifully off camera - presumably to remind audiences just how dangerous the world still was outside the good old U. S. of A.)

Unfortunately, for all it's up to the minute, Torn-from-Today's-Headlines veneer Russia exploded its first atom bomb and China fell to the communists within months of the film's release in early 1949, rendering its storyline about a dastardly Chinese warlord even more irrelevant to current events; and it fell through a fissure in history that makes it interesting today for so precisely preserving a moment of faltering uncertainty and indecision as the tectonic plates of the United States' relations with the East began shifting in ways that still haven't settled yet.

Ultra-cheap so-called thriller directed by the prolific (but not particularly talented) Sam Newfield under the pseudonym of Peter Stewart. A lot of talk and very little action makes for a dull experience.

This film highlights the complete ignorance of both Hollywood and the State Department when it came to analyzing events in both China and Mongolia in 1949.

Initially, the US sided with Chiang Kai-Shek and the Chinese Nationalists at the start of the Chinese Civil War with the Chinese Communists and Mao. The KMT controlled the cities, and the CCP controlled all the areas outside of the cities.

Mongolia was taken back from Japan by China in 1945, but since it was far away from any major Chinese city, it inevitably fell into CCP hands. The actors give it their best, but no one could rescue the poor production values, the preposterous script, and the corny dialogue that composed this turkey. Better to spend some time on YouTube and research the actual events of the Chinese Civil War.

William Lundigan is appointed to the Foreign Service. Because his parents were missionaries in Mongolia, he speaks the language and is quickly assigned to a listening post in Inner Mongolia. Soon after he arrives, however, renegades warlord Richard Loo siezes the town and the consulate in his plan to establish his independent principality.

It's a very old-fashioned movie directed by Sam Newfield, now gone from the remnants of PRC, but still chugging along with his brother Sigmund Neufeld as producer. This one is even a color production, although it's shot in Cinecolor and the print I looked at was dark and the color values a bit faded.

There's no direct mention of current events in China; the Civil War was proceeding apace and eight months after this movie was released, the National government would be expelled from the mainland. In the meantime, several talented but out-of-favor performers try to make the lines sound good, actors like virginia Bruce, Jonathan Hale and Philip Ahn; and the easily recognized Iverson ranch pretends to be Inner Mongolia.

"State Department" is a strange film because it's about politics in China but never mentions the communists--who assumed power the same year this film debuted! It's also a rather cheap and insignificant film.

The movie begins with a prologue about various workers in the foreign service who have given their lives for their country. One of these people is the subject of this film. Ken (William Lundigan) is the new vice-consul of a remote consulate in northern China. However, he just arrives at his new posting when a local warlord arrives and begins menacing everyone. This sort of stuff did happen in the 1920s and 30--and I assume that this is the time period in which the movie is based.

The film is decent but a bit dull. While it's not a bad film, it never rises to anything more than just barely average. Lundigan and the rest are pretty good--it's just that the story never seems too interesting.