 | MOVIE #1,766 • 🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿 • 06.27.24 After viewing the excellent Shock Corridor last year, I vowed to do a Samuel Fuller Director Focus soon. Well, much like today's Nic Cage entry, Sion Sono's Prisoners of the Ghostland, the A-Z actor series trumps presumptive future DFs (this makes sense to me, don't worry about). Long story short, I'm doing another Fuller movie out of order. This was kind of hard to parse for me, in terms of the historical background that it's based on/set during: I'm really not familiar with this era and conflict (the First Indochina War). James Hong is more or less a glorified extra but he does have one speaking scene… |
This also marks the first time I've ever seen Nat King Cole acting on-screen and he's very good. China Gate is more about the personal struggle of a racist American sergeant (Gene Barry) who has abandoned the son he fathered with a half-chinese woman (Angie Dickinson) because he looks far too Asian, and less about any political or tactical story related to the war. This is right in Fuller's wheelhouse, naturally, but I was also impressed by how good the fighting sequences were, like this messed up burst of violence…
This is wonderfully photographed by Joseph Biroc (It's a Wonderful Life, 13 Ghosts, Airplane! and dozens more). One of the reasons I chose Hong as a subject for just my second actor focus is that his career spans seven decades and I get to watch movies that hit on every genre and production level, from 2000s Hallmark Christmas flicks to the work of 1950s auteurs, like this, and everything in between. This doesn't rank among Fuller's best but it's still a very solid film.
CHRONOLOGICALLY
⫷ MOVIE #1,765 - (YOU ARE HERE) - MOVIE #1,767 ⫸
⫷ MOVIE #1,765 - (YOU ARE HERE) - MOVIE #1,767 ⫸
China Gate is a 1957 American CinemaScope war film written, produced and directed by Samuel Fuller and released through 20th Century Fox. The film is set during the First Indochina War (1946–1954), and depicts the relationship between a sergeant of the French Foreign Legion and the Eurasian wife whom he had abandoned. It was released on May 22, 1957 .
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