A Movie A Day: THE INN OF THE SIXTH HAPPINESS (1958) My heart and mind are Chinese, only my blood is mixed.
Published at: Dec. 26, 2008, 6:12 a.m. CST by quint
Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with today’s installment of A Movie A Day.
[For those now joining us, A Movie A Day is my attempt at filling in gaps in my film knowledge. My DVD collection is thousands strong, many of them films I haven’t seen yet, but picked up as I scoured used DVD stores. Each day I’ll pull a previously unseen film from my collection or from my DVR and discuss it here. Each movie will have some sort of connection to the one before it, be it cast or crew member.]
Forgive me for being a day late with this installment. Christmas merriment with family took up all of yesterday and I barely squeezed in the viewing of this film, THE INN OF THE SIXTH HAPPINESS, before getting to sleep around dawn. The holidays have successfully delayed me, but I’m in catch-up mood, so we’ll have a few AMADs posting today.
We follow the lovely Ingrid Bergman over from yesterday’s NOTORIOUS. THE INN OF THE SIXTH HAPPINESS is a biopic of Gladys Aylward, a real life missionary who made her way to China from England because she heard a calling. She worked for her ticket, essentially putting it on layaway, adding a couple pounds at a time until she reached the full cost. She slaves away as a maid and notices the master of the house has a lot of books on China in his library, so she “borrows” them one at a time, reading up on the country.
When she is caught her boss is more interested in than upset, having spent a lot of time working in China. He keeps her employed until she has the ticket money and even gives her the name of a friend, an elderly woman (Athene Seyler) who is essentially doing what Bergman is aiming to do.
This is only the beginning of the eternal optimism of the character and how it infects those around her. The movie is very much about the power of positive thinking, which sounds all new age bullshitty, but in my experience it’s true. If you have a dream and you follow it people will go out of their way to help you, you’ll get support you never anticipated.
I guess you could plug in a religious overtone to that, but I’m not a religious guy and never felt particularly guided. However there is a feeling of being helped. I don’t believe it’s God necessarily, but what it is doesn’t matter. Karma, Jesus, Buddha, Fate, Destiny, Zeus, Lucas, Muhammad, basic human goodness or nothing at all… could be one, some, all or none, but the result is the same.
The first act of this movie is this innocent, cheerful being trying to achieve her dream. In Gladys Aylward’s case, she feels a calling from God to go to China, help the people and spread the gospel. China is a volatile place at this time and it’s a dangerous time. She is not experienced enough to be sent officially, so all the help she gets is from sheer force of personality.
This helps her not only get a train ticket, but helps her in a much more important way when she reaches the Russia/China boarder on the Transsiberian. She is ordered to get off the train by Russian soldiers and refuses. It’s a test of faith and of her commitment to her dream. Her stubbornness and determination sees her through in the end and she finds herself in China, looking up her contact.
THE INN OF THE SIXTH HAPPINESS is a pretty long movie, about a reel shy of 3 hours and what I’ve described above all happens in the first 30 some minutes. It is Gladys Aylward’s first tests and we see her overcome many more, including befriending the Mandarin of the province, freeing Chinese girls from bound feet (a painful tradition in which the smaller toes of young girls were broken and bound tightly to give them extremely tiny feet… in the movie they say it is a way to keep the women smaller than the men, but I think it was more of a beauty tradition in real life), playing politics with the Governors of the region, etc.
Her Yoda is in the form of Athene Seyler, the elderly missionary with the bright idea of opening an Inn on the roadside offering free food, the only obligation being that when the guests are eating there will be stories of Christ told.
Strangely enough they don’t really focus on the religious angle to the missionary work, instead on the work they do to make life better for the people of the region. I’m all in favor of that. I hate being preached to and I really dislike the idea that these people go into different cultures to convince them that they’re wrong. That said, I think the best way a Christian can spread their faith is leading by example and that’s exactly what the women in this story do.
They don’t force their religion on anybody. There are no strings attached to anything but the Christ stories during meal time. Bergman adopts abandoned children (mostly “worthless” girls), risks life and injury to quell uprisings and gains a strong reputation for loving all people. It doesn’t matter if you’re a prisoner, a farmer or governor. Everybody is equal and equally deserving of love and kindness.
Seyler’s quiet strength and stubborn insistence to do the work herself makes her an endearing character and one that you’d never associate with missionary work. She’s almost gruff, but that makes you love her all the more. Seyler has a strong grandmotherly quality, instantly likable.
Bergman takes on this “important” role without making it feel like it’s an “important” role. She naturally handles the character and story so that it doesn’t feel like you’re being force-fed how “important” this movie is. This would be a huge Oscar bait movie today, with someone like Angelina Jolie starring, but still looking like a model. Bergman is hardly glamorous in this film, but is all the more beautiful for it.
Speaking of beauty, something has to be said of the cinematography by Freddie Young (LAWRENCE OF ARABIA, DOCTO ZHIVAGO). I’m a sucker for eye-popping Technicolor of the ‘40s, ‘50s and ‘60s, but what struck me with this movie was how real the Technicolor came off. The candy colored process usually doesn’t lend itself to realism, more to a spectacular cinematic fantasy world, but here it felt restrained. Definitely beautiful, especially when featuring the Chinese landscapes, but not so much that it further separates the audience from the picture in front of them.
Both Curd Jurgens and Robert Donat are Caucasians playing Chinese and that could come off as offensive, but they don’t play up stereotypes. Like Christopher Lee in previous AMAD TERROR OF THE TONGS, these people seem perfectly suited for their roles and play them with subtlety, so I couldn’t find any offense in them. Of course, I’m not Chinese, so maybe that means my opinion doesn’t count for much on the subject.
Donat in particular is great as the Mandarin of Yang Cheng. He has the difficult role of being a hardass, traditional man who also has the desire to change in his heart. Where he ends up at the climax of the movie is progressive, to say the least, and that’s all on Donat’s shoulders to deliver believably. But more than that, he’s just a charming man and very funny.
Curd Jurgens is a Captain in the army, of mixed blood. He’s half Caucasian and that causes him some shame. Oddly enough, he seems to be the only one who cares, though. Nobody else thinks any less of him for not being full-blooded Chinese. What that does do is give an incredibly strong man a deep insecurity, humanizing him.
Jurgens and Bergan have a romance in this film that is not the focus of the film, but underlines every conversation between the two and influences their actions. Even though I wouldn’t call this a romance movie their love story is slowly built until it is almost crushing.
I would also like to spotlight an early turn by one Mr. Burt Kwouk as a prisoner who is helped and changed by the kindness shown by Bergman. In return, he risks his life for her and the many children she is shepherding out of the area when the Japanese attack. You’ll remember Kwuok as Cato from the PINK PANTHER series. He’s incredibly young in this movie and gets a real chance to show off his chops.
The direction by Val Lewton regular Mark Robson (ISLE OF THE DEAD, BEDLAM) is strong and assured. He’s telling a massive story, but doesn’t ever rush it or spend too much time focusing on unimportant details… you know, typical trappings when telling an epic story.
Final Thoughts: This movie isn’t mind-blowing and deeply emotionally affecting, but it does work. Ingrid Bergman’s lead performance carries the story. You do love this woman by the end of the movie and you will feel moved, just don’t expect to be worn out like at the end of DR. ZHIVAGO. I doubt the film will ever know appreciation from modern audiences, outside of cinephiles… it doesn’t have the iconography of something like LAWRENCE OF ARABIA or BEN HUR and ultimately THE INN OF THE SIXTH HAPPINESS is a small story told in a big way, unlike those other epics, which are big stories told in big ways. That doesn’t mean the film is full of flaw or hard to watch… on the contrary, it’s a very enjoyable experience still to this day, I just don’t think it has the cross-over appeal that makes it a cornerstone in the average filmgoer’s life.
Here’s what we have lined up for the next week:
Thursday, December 25th: THE HIGH COMMISSIONER (1968)
Friday, December 26th: THE SILENT PARTNER (1979)
Saturday, December 27th: PAYDAY (1972)
Sunday, December 28th: A STRANGER IS WATCHING (1982)
Monday, December 29th: THE NEW KIDS (1985)
Tuesday, December 30th: SERIAL (1980)
Wednesday, December 31st: THE PRIVATE LIFE OF SHERLOCK HOLMES (1970)
That’s one down. I got a few more to watch and write-up today then I’ll be back to current.
See you folks tomorrow for THE HIGH COMMISSIONER following the great Burt Kwouk over!
-Quint
quint@aintitcool.com