Les 55 jours de Pékin

Watching this film in a PC era like today you may find allegations of racism being made against it , but you have to remember that 55 DAYS AT PEKING was made in 1963 . The war in the Pacific had ended less than 20 years earlier and the horrors of the Burma railway and the Bataan death march were still fresh in the memory . Likewise the UN had fought a dirty and bloody war against North Korea and Communist China ten years earlier and 1963 was a year when America started committing ground troops to South Vietnam , so this was an era where many people were worried about " the yellow peril " . One thing you can't really accuse the film of being is geo-nationalist , a coalition featuring diverse nations like Germany , Russia , Italy and France fighting alongside Britain and America ! You can tell this was made a long time ago and if it was made today the Americans would have saved the day single handed while portraying everyone else as total cowards . At least the makers of 55 DAYS AT PEKING had the decency of showing a factual historical event without having to totally rewrite history . I do hope present day Hollywood producers will take note .

My only problem with this film is that the main story is held up with a romantic subplot featuring Charlton Heston who's not exactly romantic material , but this is soon forgiven when the battle scenes arrive and what battle scenes they are . Watching these scenes today I was struck as to how they were achieved by a combination of stuntmen and stuffed dummies . That's what I hate about modern day blockbusters that rely on cartoonish CGI figures running around . It's a lot more fun seeing a couple of man sized dolls falling a couple of hundred feet with dubbed screams on the soundtrack , Hollywood doesn't seem to do this type of action sequence anymore which is a great pity

The fifties and early sixties were the golden age of the large-scale historical epic. Most of these dealt with either Biblical, Classical or Mediaeval history, but there was also a fashion for making movies on a similar epic scale dealing with more recent historical events. Many of these dealt with some aspect of European colonialism or with relations between Westerners and the inhabitants of some other part of the globe, such as "Bridge on the River Kwai", "Lawrence of Arabia", "Khartoum" or "Fifty-Five Days at Peking" which relates, from a Western viewpoint, the story of the Chinese Boxer Rebellion. My thanks are due to T R P Dean for his helpful review setting out the historical background to this event.

The film narrates the story of how the foreign residents of the Legation Quarter of Peking (it was obviously not the fashion to call it "Beijing" in 1963) managed to hold out for a siege of nearly two months in the summer of 1900 before being relieved by a multi-national expeditionary force. The main characters on the Western side are Major Lewis, the commander of the small detachment of American marines in Peking, and Sir Arthur Robertson, the British ambassador. The main characters on the Chinese side, although we see less of that side, are the Dowager Empress Tzu-Hsi and her counsellors, the devious and anti-foreigner Prince Tuan and the more liberal General Jung-Lu, who favours rapprochement with the foreigners.

There were a few things about the film that I did not like. Like a number of others, I felt that it would have been an improvement if the leading Chinese characters had not been portrayed by Western actors. I do not hold to any principle of political correctness that states that a character should not be portrayed by an actor of a different nationality, but in this particular case I felt that Chinese actors would have been more convincing. The action in the second half of the film tended to drag a bit, especially the episode where the Westerners make a raid to destroy the Boxers' arsenal. The decision to add some love-interest in the form of a romance between Lewis and a Russian princess was definitely a mistake. Charlton Heston was generally fine as an action hero but less convincing, as here, as a romantic one. Ava Gardner's performance as Princess Natasha was very much below par; there is little passion in the scenes between her and Heston.

I do not, however, agree with the criticism that the film should have showed more of the historic background to the Boxer Rebellion. The aim was to make an epic adventure story about one particular episode during that rebellion; to have attempted to explore the complexities of Chinese politics during the years leading up to it would have resulted in a very lengthy and tedious film, especially if the filmmakers had tried to include reference to events as remote in time as the Opium Wars, as some have suggested. In the main, that aim was a successful one. At the centre of the film are two fine contributions, particularly from David Niven as Robertson. Robertson is the Westerners' equivalent of Jung-Lu, a liberal by the standards of his period who (unlike many of the other Europeans) hopes to avoid war by taking a conciliatory attitude towards the Chinese. When war comes, he is forced to look inside himself to find reserves of courage and stoicism. Apart from his scenes with Gardner, Heston is also good as Lewis, the tough man of action. Although he is a very different character from Robertson, the two men discover a respect for each other as the crisis brings them together. The spectacular action scenes were mostly well done, and the costumes and architecture of this period of Chinese history were reproduced on a grand scale. Despite a few faults, this was a film that I enjoyed. 7/10

See it- Outnumbered, surrounded, insurmountable odds. These are all ingredients in the recipe of a good action movie. But these aren't the typical bad guys the good guys are fighting. They're Boxers. This is undeniably the best movie ever made about the Boxer Rebellion in China in 1900. And when you've got a rebellion on your hands, who you gonna call? Charlton Heston of course. David Niven teams up with Heston in the defense of Peking with an allied force made up of soldiers from the 10 different nations that had foreign embassies in China. I thought it was pretty cool to watch the various soldiers from the different armies marching around in their respective uniforms. Kind of like the opening ceremony in the Olympics. My only complaint is that this movie is a bit too long. I swear every Charlton Heston movie has an intermission. But you will be surprised by how much action this movie actually has. For some reason this film is largely unknown. But it is very exciting, and has plenty of "storming-the-castle"type siege scenes. Everyone likes an underdog, and this is a very underrated film. 3.5 out of 5 action rating

I am commenting on the DVD version that I have now and I have not seen since 1963. There is a very big difference as in 1963 not only I was much younger but Cinema has changed. 55 Days was a Large Screen Movie compared with the Ten Commandments, Cleopatra of the same year 1963 and The Sound of Music and many others at that period. In those days of Cinema Hollywood convinced people to go to the Cinema with Movies that are not the same on Black and White TV on Small Screen. Watching it on DVD is not the same. Technirama an Advanced Technicolor, Dolby Stereo not as big as Cinerama. I specifically remember sitting in the cinema and the sound moved behind us. For example the Musical Bands in the opening scenes playing the anthems. About the History of China read the other comments. Still a very exciting Movie where a minority overcomes the Mass's winning at the end. David Niven does an interesting part that reminds me of the Guns of Navarone. Heston and most other actors do it very well too. Nine out of Ten in Sam's Scale.

I actually enjoyed this film a good deal more than I was expecting to; Charlton Heston epics aren't my thing, and when I noticed the overall running time my heart sank. To be honest, the only real reason I sat down to watch it was because I'd just finished David Niven's highly entertaining autobiography 'The Moon's a Balloon' -- and I was curious to renew my acquaintance with his actual work!

But the film grabbed me from the first, and I simply wasn't aware of its length. And while Heston's still not my favourite actor, mercifully neither he nor the US Marines were allowed to steal the show -- what could so easily have been produced as a 'simple soldiers good, morally compromised diplomats bad' gung-ho display is here allowed more intellectual depth. As Matt Lewis, Heston doesn't get to personally rescue the entire cast from liquidation -- although he does make an attempt! -- and contemporary concepts of 'face' and international affairs are taken into account. The film makes a good stab at explaining the historical background to the events from both sides of the conflict: I can't answer for its accuracy, but it comes across as reasonable and clear-headed, as the Empress first temporises and then commits her full authority to the gamble to expel the foreigners. No individual is exempt from misjudgements or doubt, and as a result none of the characters become really annoying.

So far as watching Niven was concerned I was lucky, as it happened -- he's certainly in a plum part here, cast in a leading 'character' role against the all-American action hero but arguably more central to the story. And it has to be said he makes a very good job of it, aided by an intelligent script; the only scene that seemed a little gratuitous was the arsenal sequence, where this middle-aged diplomat is suddenly taking part in undercover action when he is neither suited to the task nor dispensable from his own duties, with no real rationale provided. (My guess, 'in-story', would be that he was tired of sitting inactive with the deaths of others on his hands -- but if so, it's not given, and one is left to fall back on the story-external suspicion that the actor wanted to be seen to have a part in the heroics...)

As the Russian Baroness Natalie, Ava Gardner is somewhat elusive: ''I have you in my hands; but you keep slipping through my fingers,'' Lewis complains, and she remains cool and detached from life and the concerns of the others -- her surrender to Lewis comes across as that of a woman who no longer values her own body rather than a passionate gift. This would be an excellent piece of characterisation if it were intentional... unfortunately, I strongly suspect that it isn't! Heston is credible in the opening hotel scene as the no-frills soldier out for a quick liaison, with the rules understood on both sides, but he's pretty wooden when it comes to providing genuine emotion; and when the Baroness is challenged on their relationship after several weeks during which we've scarcely seen them exchange a word, I was assuming that she would truthfully retort that there was nothing between them... As a love affair it certainly doesn't look like a grand passion, and she seems to put more devotion into her work in the hospital and the old man in the shop outside that she does to Lewis. The trouble is, I think we're supposed to take it seriously.

Heston's performance is fairly one-note throughout -- the scenes with the little girl are particularly stilted, although it's hard to be sure in that case if it's the character's inability to cope or the actor's -- and I have to say I found it hard to warm much to Major Lewis. His closest touches of humanity seem to be with the fellow-Marines under his command, which could, again, simply be brilliant characterisation rather than limited acting... he's fine when he's being square-jawed and heroic, and at the beginning of the film he does show a dry wit for which there is understandably little scope later on. Otherwise, I'm afraid I felt the film succeeded despite rather than because of Heston's star billing, wisely keeping him to a relatively restrained role in an ensemble cast. I suspect this failure to build up the part of the hero is the root cause of the criticism that '55 Days at Peking' spreads its action over too many unimportant characters, but I found it arguably one of the major strengths of the production.

This film admirably fulfils the function of the epic in that it has a big story to tell and makes a gripping narrative of it through all its ebbs and flows. If the romantic sub-plot is rather weak, this is also a convention of the genre... and it *is* only a sub-plot! For my money, David Niven carries off the acting laurels among the principals, while Ava Gardner's damaged Natalie is intriguing even if not tragic; the script rarely allows us to relax, even in what seem like tranquil moments. There is always a new twist around the corner, and the running-time passes like a flash.

This could have been a thoroughly obnoxious piece of military posturing, but it isn't. To my surprise, I rather liked it.