The nineteen year-old Danielle Darrieux, so talented at light comedies, was starting to take the film industry, and her career in it, seriously. Fortunately, her talent extended easily into dramatic roles.
In Port-Arthur she plays a half-Russian, half-Japanese woman newly married to Boris (Anton Walbrook), a Russian naval officer. She is put in an impossible position when the Japanese lay siege to the Russian fleet at Port Arthur, because unfortunately her brother Ivamoura (Jean Max) is a top Japanese spy.
To play Youki, Darrieux spent two and a half hours in make-up each day. This included glueing strips of cloth to her eyelids! Perhaps more to the point she has to act as a traditional Japanese woman, expressing emotion within the boundaries of politeness. When she screams her husband thinks she is asking for help carrying the tea tray. Her blank face makes those moments when emotions break out all the more important.
Youki's husband and her brother both consider their honour to be more important than her life.
The men ride horses, hide in barrels, smoke their way through war cabinet meetings, release carrier pigeons, and generally run around. There are serious battle scenes with lots of extras.
As a historical film it tells us something about the siege of Port Arthur, but I suppose it's also inadvertently a bit of a historical piece in itself, released as it was in 1936.
Of course there's a European bias to the whole thing, perhaps undermining the film's message that we're all one really, and in a similar way I'm not left entirely sure what the film's attitude towards the importance of flags and honour actually is, but it certainly raises the question.
