Lady from Chungking

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Movie
Original title Lady from Chungking
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1942
length 71 minutes
Rod
Director William Nigh
script Milton Raison ,
Sam Robins
production Alexander-Stern Productions
camera Marcel Le Picard
cut Charles Henkel Jr.
occupation

Lady from Chungking is a 1942 American propaganda film directed by William Nigh .

action

A Chinese village during the Second World War . After Japanese troops occupy the country, the locals are forced to work in the rice fields. Kwan Mei - a noblewoman whose family has been expropriated by the Japanese - commands a group of partisans preparing an armed uprising.

When Japanese fighters shoot down an American bomber over the rice field in which Kwan Mei and her followers are working, the two pilots, Rodney Carr and Pat O'Rourke, are able to save themselves with their parachutes. However, O'Rourke is shot by a Japanese field overseer, who Kwan Mei immediately kills. While the partisans are hiding the injured American, Carr makes a heroic but futile attempt to attack a group of Japanese soldiers. The Japanese officer, Lieutenant Shimoto, has him arrested at once and takes him before General Kaimura, who has just arrived and whom Kwan Mei later calls "the butcher" because of his notorious sadism. Kaimura interrogates Carr, but although he threatens with torture and then lures him with payment, Carr does not reveal what he knows about the attack plans of the American air force. Kaimura has him locked up in the basement of his hotel. There he made the acquaintance of Lavara, who works as a singer in the hotel. As an American born abroad who has never set foot in the US, she is on a quest to find her personal and national identity. Carr is the first American man she meets, and of course the sparks fly immediately.

Nevertheless, Lavara, as a hotel entertainer, should initially provide Kaimura's entertainment. His adjutant Shimoto knows his general's taste, however, and knows that he is not into snappy American girls, but rather real women. Lavara is therefore quickly replaced by Kwan Mei, whom Shimoto met when Carr was arrested and whom he introduces to his commander under a false name. Kaimura is enraptured by the elegant Kwan Mei and makes her his constant companion. When she learns enough about him, she informs Carr about the Japanese military plans and persuades Lavara to free him so that he can pass this information on to his commanders. During his escape, there is an exchange of fire with Japanese soldiers, in which Lavara is seriously injured; However, Carr manages to escape and also bring his beloved to safety.

The information passed on by Carr can be used for a large-scale liberation strike against the Japanese. The moment of triumph and truth has come for Kwan Mei when she openly confronts Kaimura with her betrayal and then shoots him. Before the bullet kills him, however, he can still have it shot, which takes place immediately. As she dies, Kwan Mei declares her belief that peace and the Chinese people will prevail.

When the Chinese Air Force flies an attack, Kwan Mei declares himself Kaimura and shoots him. While he is dying, Kwan Mei is also shot by his people and dies, but as he dies declares their conviction that in this one peace and their people will triumph.

background

Japan and China have been at war since the Marco Polo Bridge incident on July 7, 1937 . Although the Chinese national government received military support from the US after the beginning of World War II and especially after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 , the situation on the Chinese front remained undecided until the end of the war. Main article: The Sino-Japanese War .

The city of Chungking - actually Chongqing - from which the female main character took her nickname , is now a city east of the Chinese province of Sichuan .

Propaganda tools and stereotypes

Against the backdrop of World War II, the film takes sides with the Japanese-occupied Republic of China and against the Japanese aggressors, who have also been enemies of the USA since the attack on Pearl Harbor. The Japanese military appear in this film as selfish, ruthless and cruel conquerors, to whom any humanity is alien and who also threaten, torture and execute civilians and the defenseless - such as children, women and the elderly. The Japanese General Kaimura conducts an interrogation in the course of which he arbitrarily lets three old men shot: in the company of his lover (Kwan Mei) and with an alcoholic drink in hand. He then explains to Kwan Mei that such acts of cruelty whet his appetite.

The Americans are characterized as daring daredevils who do not shy away from a confrontation with their opponents even when they are hopelessly inferior. The opening scene shows an aerial battle between seven Japanese fighters and a single American bomber. The aviator Carr is a sympathetic devil who never loses a trace of his charm, good mood and confidence. Even during the interrogation with the "butcher" Kaimura, he exudes so much humor that the Japanese simply looks bad compared to the lively American. More important than his life is his military mission to Carr, which he is not willing to betray either under torture or for payment.

Almost unimportant for the progress of the plot, but a key figure for propaganda purposes, is the singer Lavara, who appears as a classic American glamor girl with her lush blonde hair, her chic and her somewhat flippant manners, but then reveals that, despite her American mother, she has never been in the USA was. Their inner distance from the motherland is expressed in a selfish pragmatism; She told Kwan Mei (who is the only one who suspects that there is a fighter in Lavara) that she does not take sides with anyone in this multinational war except for herself. With her love for the American aviator, however, she develops into a patriot and takes part Carr's release, in which she almost dies (the film leaves that open), even a heroic deed.

A German also plays a role as a secondary character: the hotel owner Hans Gruber, who on the one hand appears as a joke with his bald head, his ability to serve and his habit of even greeting the Japanese with a robust "Heil Hitler". On the other hand, he turns out to be an opportunist who supplies the Chinese with weapons - if they pay with hard American dollars - even though as a Nazi he was supposed to be loyal to the Japanese allies.

The Chinese are represented in the film by the title character Kwan Mei. Her actress, Anna May Wong , was the most famous Sino-American film actress of her time. Because of her Chinese ancestry, Wong had been committed to highly clichéd characters well into the 1930s. As a performer in China Dolls and Dragon Ladys , she hardly had the opportunity to interpret Asian women in a differentiated and sympathetic way in racist Hollywood before the Second World War . Although racism also experienced a new boom in the USA during the war, Wong came closer than ever to her personal goal of helping to improve the image of the Chinese in the genre of propaganda films.

Kwan Mei, too, is a dragon lady who systematically uses seduction to eliminate her opponent. In order to achieve this goal, it does not shy away from cruelty - a trait that the American media have repeatedly ascribed to the Chinese. However, this cliché is undermined by Kwan Mei's sensitivity (she can hardly bear to watch the shooting of the old men), her selfless political idealism and her caring (towards the child Lu-Chi and towards the injured O'Rourke).

Production and theatrical release

"Lady from Chungking" was the second film by Alexander-Stern Productions, the production company of Arthur Alexander , a German who had worked in Hollywood since the 1920s , that only existed from 1942 to 1945 . The company specialized in westerns and action films; their most successful product was a multi-part western series with the crime-solving "Texas Ranger" Dave Wyatt ( Dave O'Brien ).

Alexander selected 60-year-old William Nigh as director for “Lady from Chungking” , who was already in great demand during the silent film era and who has recently made films such as “Gangster's Boy” (1938) and “Son of the Navy” (1940 ) and "Mr. Wise Guy ”(1942) emerged. Nigh had already worked with the leading actress Anna May Wong in the 1920s ("Mr. Wu", 1927; "Across to Singapore", 1928). The role of the Japanese general Kaimura was cast with Harold Huber, a New York- born white man who had occasionally played Far Easterners since the 1930s, including in the great MGM film “ The Good Earth ” (1937). The audience was more familiar with Huber from a series of Charlie Chan films in which he portrayed various (white) police officers. Mae Clarke , the actress who played Lavara, was known from James Whale's " Frankenstein " film from 1931 , among others . The German hotelier was played by Ludwig Donath , an actor born in Vienna who went to the USA via Switzerland in the 1930s , where he appeared in numerous anti-Nazi films; in James P. Hogan's war film " The Strange Death of Adolf Hitler " (1943) he appeared in the role of the title character.

"Lady from Chungking" premiered on December 21, 1942 . The Producers Releasing Corporation (PRC) took over the distribution.

criticism

The New York Times writes that “Lady from Chungking” does not reach the level of Wong's following film “ Bombs Over Burma ”, which benefited from the skills of its director Joseph H. Lewis .

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