Reeling Backward: "The Inn of the Sixth Happiness" (1958)

"The Inn of the Sixth Happiness" features the incomparable Ingrid Bergman and also Hollywood's maddening habit of taking a true life story and bullshitting it up into a sappy romance.

Gladys Aylward was a real Englishwoman and longtime domestic (read: maid) who at the spinsterish age of 30 used her life savings to travel to China to work as an unaccredited missionary. She ended up making it her home -- earning Chinese citizenship, the trust of the people and even a minor government post. Aylward adopted several children of her own and rescued more than 100 orphans  from certain death during World War II.

A pretty inspiring tale, which made for a popular book, "The Small Woman" by Alan Burgess.

But of course the studio couldn't leave well enough alone. In addition to casting the tall, stunning Bergman in the lead role -- who hides her Swedish accent about as well Sean Connery sounded like a Russian submarine captain -- they cast German actor Curd Jürgens as her half Chinese/half Dutch lover.

(Speaking of Connery, he screen tested for Jürgens' role, but was probably deemed too young in his late 20s to start opposite Bergman, who was then in her early 40s.)

Jürgens wears slightly tinted makeup and prosthetic to complete the racially insensitive ensemble. Bad enough, except that his character, Colonel Lin Nan, is based on a real (and non-biracial) Chinese official who befriended her. The film's ending shows her abandoning her young charges to return to her home province, presumably to reunite with Lin.

When the real Aylward saw the movie she was mortified, commenting that she had never so much as kissed a man in her whole life.

To complete things, another major Chinese character, the Mandarin of Yang Cheng, is played by British actor Robert Donat, also in embarrassing, unconvincing makeup. (Yellowface?)

At least one major Chinese character, Aylward's cook and companion Yang, is played by an Asian actor, Peter Chong.

They couldn't even get the title right. The name of the hotel that Aylward ran along with an elderly missionary, Jeannie Lawson (Athene Seyler), was actually called "The Inn of the Eight Happinesses." (The Chinese consider the number eight lucky.)

Not really sure why six happinesses is considered worse than eight.

But all films are a product of their times, and I can't dismiss the movie for following common -- if grating -- practices of its era. I'm sure screenwriter Isobel Lennart was pressured into making changes so that American audiences would find the story more palatable.

(Heck, in this space I once profiled a movie called "Across the Pacific" in which the characters never even reach the Pacific Ocean.)

Bergman admirably carries the movie as Aylward, who later is given the name Zhen-Ai, which is translated for us as "she who loves everyone." She depicts the character as brave and resolute without losing her crushing sense of humility. Zhen-Ai Aylward is less Norma Rae than a shrinking violet who learns to toughen up.

The first act is about her saving up the money and pluck to get to China after being refused a spot as a missionary. Despite her faith and obvious devotion, it seems she is rejected solely for being from a lower working class.

Her introduction to Yang Cheng is challenging. The locals are suspicious of foreigners, and she gets chased by some women for daring to help up a small child who had fallen in the mud. The poverty and the way human life seems debased repulse her.

Eventually they get the inn going, a waystation for traveling mule teams who serve as the lifeblood of the rural economy. They entice the men with stories of baby Jesus and other biblical tales. Her older companion soon dies, and Aylward must persevere on her own.

The Mandarin -- sort of a governor and judge rolled into one -- gives her the job of "foot inspector" to make sure the people are following the government's new edicts against footbinding. It was a horrid custom in which little girls' feet are tightly bound to crush them into tiny lotus shapes and never grow any larger. She only gets the job because the previous foot inspectors, all men, were run out of the various villages, and the Mandarin deems her the most expendable candidate.

Lin Nan turns up as the modernistic government official trying to drag the peasants into the 20th century. He's half-Danish and despises his European blood, and at first is deeply suspicious of the two interloper women. But things get progressively mushier.

It's certainly a beautiful film, with the Welsh mountains standing in for Chinese ones. Director Mark Robson, who had just been nominated for an Academy Award for "Peyton Place," scored another nod for this film. This makes him one of the few directors to score Oscar nominations in consecutive years.

Despite the racial swap I enjoyed Donat as the Mandarin, a man who projects an image of fierceness to protect the deep sentiment he secretly harbors. It's the sort of well-written supporting role you saw a lot of in mid-century Hollywood fare.

I loved and hated "The Inn of the Sixth Happiness." Before seeing it I would have said I could watch Ingrid Bergman in just about anything, but this film tested that resolve at times. It's a classic white-person-goes-someplace-exotic-and-finds-their-inner-peace story, which I could have appreciated for what it was, if not for the stiff and manufactured love story.

It's a romantic film; but the real passion was between a woman and her adopted homeland. No kissyface necessary.

Reeling Backward: "The Enemy Below" (1957)

One of the things I always appreciated about Humphrey Bogart is that he doesn't look like a movie star -- with his stopped posture, unimposing stature, scarred lips, slurred speech and (reputed) toupee, he was nobody's idea of handsome. And yet he commanded the screen with his soulful eyes and the way he rolled his jaw.

Robert Mitchum, on the other hand, looks every inch the movie star. I have this theory about stars that mostly applies to women but, to a lesser degree, men as well. It's not enough that they be attractive. There are thousands of perfect-looking models who never make it in the movies. The may lack the acting ability, but looks play a role, too. People respond to actors who are not only handsome, but have a distinct look that sets them apart.

Take Julia Roberts. Her sparkly eyes, cascade of curls and iconic horsey smile make her not only beautiful, but unforgettable. Audiences don't want blandly beautiful, but performers who stand out and are memorable.

Mitchum was a tall, good-looking lug, but very much in a distinct way all his own. If you look at him in profile, his entire face seems to be sloping forward like an arrowhead, with his eyes marking the tip of the point. It gives him this aggressive, confident quality that he carried in all his roles. His eyes were famously baggy, but set deep and so wide apart they seemed to have a mournful tilt. His long nose and jaw fell straight down to a chin that seemed less dimpled than cleft with an axe.

"The Enemy Below" may not have been Mitchum's greatest acting job, but the movie doesn't really call for one. Mitchum, who liked to say that acting is mostly about showing up, hitting your marks and not flubbing your lines, manages to do just that here. Jurgens fares better, getting in a few licks as a reluctant warrior who fights for his country rather than the current regime.

It's a straightforward World War II picture, a battle of wits between an American destroyer captain (Mitchum) and a German submarine commander (Curt Jurgens). Mitchum really doesn't have much to do other than snap orders, with the exception of one brief scene where he confides in the ship's doctor (Russell Collins) that he was a merchant ship captain before the war, and that his wife was killed when his boat was cut in two by a U-boat torpedo.

Still, while recognizing that it's not any sort of great piece of acting by Mitchum or a searing portrait of war, if one accepts "The Enemy Below" as an action-filled war movie, it's thoroughly entertaining stuff.

Director Dick Powell -- a busy actor who also directed a half-dozen flicks, including Mitchum in "The Hunters" -- and screenwriter Wendell Mayes concern themselves with the manly exploits of naval combat, with a few human scenes tossed in to give it a little color. Interestingly, it's based on a book by D.A. Rayner, a British naval officer who saw plenty of anti-submarine combat. All the Brit characters were changed to Yanks for the movie.

For awhile, we follow the conversations of two or three swabbies aboard the USS Haynes expressing their concern about the fitness of their new captain, and I figured they'd pop up now and again as sort of a resident Greek chorus. But the movie misplaces them after the first 20 minutes or so. There's also an African-American sailor constantly mopping the deck who sneaks into a couple of conversations, I guess to comment on on the segregation of the military during WWII. By 1957, when "Enemy" came out, the forces were mostly integrated.

The battle scenes are indeed impressive for the time, although one doesn't have to look too hard to spot when the edits cut from footage of the real vessels to the models. The film won an Oscar for special effects.

All the hallmarks of the submarine genre are here -- the pinging sonar, the worrying creak of the hull as the captain orders the ship below the maximum recommended depth, the shaking as depth charges explode, one man freaking out at the claustrophobic setting, etc. What's notable about "The Enemy Below" is it was one of the first films to show the Germans on the receiving end.

Even 24 years later, the great "Das Boot" was considered groundbreaking (and controversial) for daring to show German submariners as brave and true.

The film ends with both ships fatally wounded, and the American skipper saves the German captain and his number two (Theodore Bikel) before the automatic detonators blow up the U-boat. The idea of Americans and German being equally capable of nobility and depravity was still pretty bold in 1957.

3 stars out of four