 |  | Surprizingly Well Kept For It's Time! |  |
I remember watching this film with my mom on a weekday afternoon as a kid and wondering why she was crying at the end. It seemed boring as a kid watching it. But as my taste for movies advanced, so did the understading of this film. I took a chance on this film again and was pretty touched by it. It's a carefully patterned film with one of my favorite actors. William Holden is a true romantic leading man. He would get another shot on a similar project, "The World of Susie Wong." The casting of Jennifer Jones was satisfactory as she plays her part very well, although it loses it's luster as she is not asian. But it's the backdrop of Hong Kong and the beautifully photographed landscape that impressed me the most, epecially the unforgetable musical score that surrounds the couple. Though the film does seem tame compared to the chick-flix nowadays. But I'll take this film over any of the others currently being made. As for the familiar tune, you'll have it in your head all day. Recommended for those who long for the good old days of film.
June 30, 2008| | | Love is A Many Splendered Thung | |
This a an unusually good movie. Jennifer Jones and William Holden are excellent. Also the direction and plot. About love and tragedy.
June 14, 2008 | | I should have known from the corny title... | |
I can't believe the number of 5 star reviews for this corny, bad dialogue and blatantly racist film. Heck, I've never even heard of the term EuAsian before and it had to be mentioned in this script at least 200 times. I cared nothing for these people as a couple and found this whole thing an insult to anyone's intelligence.
May 10, 2008Jennifer Jones may not have been the greatest actress of Hollywood's Golden Age, but she was absolutely solid, and could even be quite excellent when given a chance to show her comic side in fare off the beaten track like CLUNY BROWN or BEAT THE DEVIL. She spent most of her time in soapers like this one, however, where she did not necessarily redeem the material but at least always brought a likability and dignity to her work that often made her seem better than her films deserved. In this famous weeper Jones plays Dr. Han Suyin, a Hong Kong doctor and (as her character repeats again and again, as if we might forget it) a Eurasian. Searching for meaning in her life in the years after World War II, she finds ecstacy in the arms of Mark Elliot (William Holden), an American journalist. Though stigmatized by her hospital for living a white man, Dr. Han learns to surrender herself to love, and experiences rapture with Mark on the beaches and hilltops of Hong Kong (photographed here to look like a perpetual ghost city). Fortune tellers promise them a long life and many children... and then the Korean War starts, and Mark is called away to cover the combat. (Guess what happens.)
Many people have found real emotional catharsis in the film, particularly in its famous ending back on that hilltop: Jones and Holden at least add quite a lot of class to the proceedings (although they could not stand each other in real life and quarreled constantly on the set). The script offers only a few pleasurable howlers in the dialogue (Third Uncle to Han Suyin: "We shall now have tea and speak of absurdities"), but is pretty lackluster and amateurish: for whatever reason, the screenwriters require Dr. Han to identify herself on the telephone in practically every scene. Other mysteries include why Fox did not shoot the film in Cinemascope, even though the setting and theme practically beg for it, and why Jones is constantly forced to wear such dowdy and ill-fitting cheongsams. Though the blissed-out Sammy Fain theme song is much adored, it is repeated throughout to an almost maddening degree.
December 12, 2007 | | Love is a Many Splendored Thing | |
At age 71 - I have looked back over my lifetime and have memories of movies that really touched me. This was one of those - - so I have purchased this memory and have enjoyed it once again. I am glad I bought it - because I can now watch it over and over - which I will do. At this age I now realize that there are things that give meaning to your life, and how you live it, and so I am now going back and trying to recapture those small tokens to keep and cherish. This is not much of a review as a return to my youth. Sorry.
October 27, 2007More reviews at Amazon.com ...
Daily Birthdays
(52 reviews)