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Badmovies.org Forum  |  Movies  |  Bad Movies  |  55 days at Peking (1963) « previous next »
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Author Topic: 55 days at Peking (1963)  (Read 2022 times)
Neville
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« on: July 21, 2006, 11:59:07 AM »

I have to admit I have a soft spot for old-time epics. Not all of them, certainly, but Samuel Bronston's work never ceases to amaze me. It's difficult to find a figure like him, where vision and just plain megalomania meet with the quietude of a train wreck.

For all those woh never heard of him, Bronston was a Moldavian tycoon who had a great interest in movies, and around the 1960s he found himself in the position of producing a string of epics for Hollywood. He based his production company in Spain, which had become an amicable location for many similar films, and hired grade A figures to work under his orders.

The results were far from perfect. Bronston himself, as they say it often happens with new richmen, had a mediocre artistic taste, and often misunderstood quality with quantity, and a good scene with a scene that would require a thousand extras. His films, one inmediately notices, never pretend to be the best shows Hollywood could stage, but the most spectacular shows Hollywood could afford to pay. Being the 60s, and being the sword and sandal epics on their last days of life, at least thanks to him the old-time epics left with a bang.

I personaly find his work fascinating. Apart from the stuff that I mentioned, his films are like dinosaurs. Their kind once ruled the screens, and nothing will ever equal them, as anybody who has seen the newest trend of epics spawned after the success of "Gladiator" can tell.

And one positive thing must be said about Bronston: he put great care in the films he made. The crews, casts and resources used were aboslutely the finest money could buy at the time, so if the string of movies he produced are not exactly triumphs of the artistic spirit, they are, apart from lavish shows, often fun -if you are into epics, that is- and solid work.

I finally got to own several of Bronston's epics, and I plan to review them here as I watch them during the following weeks.

Today, it's the turn of Nicholas Ray's "55 Days at Peking".

Plot: During the year 1900, rumours of revolution shake the Chinese empire. Word is that the Boxers are about to start a revolt and, with the consent of the Emtress, slaughter every westerner in Peking. The British ambassador (David Niven) convinces the rest of the foreigners in Peking that their best option is to stay where they are, and with the help of an US major (Charlton Heston), he prepares the defense of the city against the rebels.

Nicholas Ray had worked before with Bronston, in the probably superior "King of kings", but he was in poor health during the shooting and his confrontations with Bronston let to his firing, so the film was finished without him. This is quite noticeable in the final cut, as the filmmaking is quite plain. More on that later.

You can tell from the start that this film is not going to be high cuisine, as Charlton Heston's machismo and the corny dialogue tells from miles away, but it's solid work and, now and then, real fun. It's main problem is that the plot is so thin that it often feels that it's a two hour film that has been stretched until reaching 150 minutes. Despite this, though, I can't say it's boring or neverending. Simply put, there's too much distance between the action bits, and when those are nowhere to be found the film lacks a real backbone.

Still, it's somehow impressive. Bronston build a whole 60 acres replica of Peking in the outskirts of Madrid (!) and so many battles and skirmishes are staged in this wonderful scenario that the film becames a quite engaging show. There's something in the way in which Ray -or his substitutes- frames the settings and the literally hundreds of extras that populate almost every outdoors scene that makes every modern, CGI enslaved epic look like an impostor, and while his filmmaking arguably lacks any wit it still oozes enough profesionalism to compensate for the flaws of the film.
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The Burgomaster
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« Reply #1 on: July 21, 2006, 04:44:10 PM »

I have always wanted to see this movie, but I haven't been able to get around to it yet.  I'm too busy watching stuff like MAMA DRACULA and TEENAGERS FROM OUTER SPACE.
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Neville
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« Reply #2 on: July 21, 2006, 05:07:24 PM »

No masterpiece, I tell you, but damn worth the rental. They just don't make them like this one anymore. Plus you get to see David Niven and Charlton Heston playing ninja in one scene, which alone is funny enough.
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BoyScoutKevin
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« Reply #3 on: July 27, 2006, 11:19:14 AM »

I've seen this several times, though not on the big screen, but on television. I liked it, as I liked most of the films produced by Samuel Bronston.

I liked the action sequences.

I liked the cast, which besides the actors already named, included Ava Gardner, John Ireland, Harry Andrews, Kurt Kasznar, Paul Lukas, etc. And watch for Nicholas Ray in the role of the American ambassador to China.

And unlike  "Gladiator," which apparently used CGI for some of its crowd effects, he believed in using real bodies in the crowd scenes.  Which gave rise to a story, which I thought was apocryphal, but was apparently true. If you wanted a Chinese meal at a Chinese restaurant at this time, in Spain, you often couldn't  get one, because most the Chinese restaurant employees, including often the owners, were outside Madrid making this film.  Which does not mean, that he did not use Caucasians in Asian make-up, such as Flora Robson, Leo Genn, and Robert Helpmann, in some of the larger roles.

Also, as far as I know, this is the only sound film made about the Boxer Rebeillion, which I think is worth reading about, as it involved the Chinese against the combined might of Austria, France, Germany, Itlay, Japan, Russia, the U.K., and the U.S.
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Neville
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« Reply #4 on: July 27, 2006, 11:52:57 AM »

Yep, I heard that anecdote too, it's on the IMDB profile of the movie, and it could be easily true, as Chinese inmigrants were much more scarce in my country back then. Can't speak for their cuisine, but they certainly add a lot to the movie's ambientation.
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Shadowphile
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« Reply #5 on: July 30, 2006, 03:53:26 PM »

I can't see it as being true, unless he was offering to pay more than the businesses could make by staying open.  Of course offering the wait staff an extra 10 cents an hour would have been enough to clean out most establishments, so I suppose the owners might have been willing to close their doors just based on the fact that their staff was missing.  I'll take it with a grain of salt....
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Neville
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« Reply #6 on: July 30, 2006, 06:05:33 PM »

I'm buying it. Spain wasn't exactly land of the plenty on the early 60s, although it was starting to become one, and Bronston was known for paying the Spanish staff far more than they were used to it. I once read an interview with a horse trainer who had worked for him and mentioned that the horse insurance itself was so generous that every injured horse was sacrificed at once and the resulting pay used to buy three healthy horses.
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Scott
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« Reply #7 on: July 31, 2006, 08:33:48 PM »

It's been a long time since I've seen this film. Must check it out again someday when it comes on AMC or TCM.
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