Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing (1955)

Pretty Good

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

Mark Elliott (William Holden) is a married American war correspondent in Hong Kong who who falls for a widowed Eurasian-Chinese doctor, Han Suyin (Jennifer Jones.) Both have to overcome prejudice and other obstacles thrown at them.Dr Han Suyin is a caring doctor in British Hong Kong but refugees are flooding in from communist China during its civil war. Some of her fellow doctors want Han to go to China and work in a hospital there. On the other hand Mark might be sent to cover a new conflict in Korea.The film has repeated strains of its title song which can become irritating. It also tries to ape From Here to Eternity in a similar type of beach scene. Some of the dialogue is clunky. William Holden just doesn't cut it here in a romantic role, he looks grumpy. Jones is enchanting enough when she is not constantly repeating her mixed race heritage.The film is daring for the time with its mixed race romance but Mark is already married and you can reckon that it will end up in tragedy. The location shooting in Hong Kong is dazzling at times.

I watched this the other night with my wife. The film is available on Netflix. It's a good movie if you like 1950s romantic tearjerkers like we do. Ms. Jones and Mr. Holden play their roles well as always. The romantic chemistry between the two is very believable and touching. The story itself was well written with a few overly melodramatic moments common in films of this decade. Still I'm a sucker for these movies, the same goes for 'All That Heaven Allows', 'Magnificent Obsession', 'Peyton Place' and others from the 50s with different actors of course. They're mostly high budget soap operas, still they're fun. This one takes place in Hong Kong and involves a married correspondent who falls in love with a widowed part-Chinese doctor. We see them dealing with the problems of a mixed culture relationship..and his marriage to an unloving wife. It contains beautiful scenes reminiscent of another film Mr. Holden was in 'The World of Suzy Wong'.(1960) which he would make years later. Reportedly Ms. Jones did not get along at all with William Holden on the set, so it's impressive they were able to have so much chemistry on screen. It's said she would eat garlic before a love scene just to irritate him. At the time of the filming she was married to studio head David O. Selznick and it's said she made constant demands. The plot is based on a true life story. I won't give much more away about the story except to say have the tissue box ready. I rate this 6 out of 10 stars.

A widowed doctor of both Chinese and European descent (Jennifer Jones) falls in love with a married American correspondent (William Holden) in Hong Kong during China's Communist revolution.I love William Holden, so I appreciate him in this story. Jennifer Jones I am not as familiar with. Looking back now, it seems sort of racist to have a white woman play a Chinese woman, but at least she is only half-Chinese, so it is not as blatant as the roles that Boris Karloff and Peter Lorre were playing.How close this fits into the actual story from the memoir, I do not know. But as someone who loves the history of the Korean War, I appreciate how this has factored in. For those who have forgotten, between World War II and the Korean War, the Chinese switched from being American allies to American enemies. How that might affect a Sino-American romance is something only those in one could know.

After patiently sitting through this 1955, star-vehicle, meant solely to showcase the likes of Jennifer Jones and William Holden, I'm now convinced that love is a many-demented thing. It really is. As on-screen lovers, I found Jones and Holden had as much chemistry going between them as do two, cross-eyed slugs meeting for the first time.I think - The only audience that this trite, mixed-race tale of semi-forbidden romance could ever appeal to would be those who (within watching the first 10 minutes of this film) still cannot figure out where this one's story is inevitably heading. (Yes. This picture's story was really that predictable) This film also lost itself some significant points because director Henry King did not see the importance (as I do) of taking lots of close-ups of the actors' faces as they deliver their dialogue, pretending to emote real feelings of passion, anger, sorrow, etc., etc. King held the camera back so far that I couldn't tell, a good part of the time, what the real expression was on these people's faces.*Note* - Be prepared to end up hating (like I did) this film's title song "Love Is A Many-Splendored Thing" by the time the story is over, due to repeated strains of this popular tune being constantly recycled throughout the entire course of its 102-minute running time.