Recently, I talked about Daughter of Shanghai, a 30s movie starring Anna May Wong in what is considered one of the first films to have asian protagonists that aren't portrayed stereotypically. This film is not as refined as Daughter of Shanghai for some different reasons, but because it has to do with the second world war, my viewing experience of it was mostly positive. The historical background for this movie's setting is the most interesting thing about it in my view. Wong, who was Chinese, traveled there around the time of the Japanese invasion and donated money to help chinese forces beat back Imperial Japan, who was currently committing too many horrendous atrocities against civilians to keep track of. Even though Hitler would not invade Poland until 1939, many argue that world war 2 started when japan invaded china. While Lady from Chungking takes place in the early 40s, it still prominently features the japanese as the unmistakable enemy, and Wong has to try and stop them from murdering people by any means. The story starts by showing chinese laborers working in a rice field under the supervision of some japanese soldiers. A girl named Kwan Mei (Wong) is secretly planning to get together a group of civilian fighters to wage a bitter guerrilla war on the invaders. When forced to interact with them face to face, she makes it seem like china is a huge but submissive country that needs to be dominated by japan in order to benefit the future of east Asia as a whole. Kwan organizes a large amount of peasants (unknown to the japanese) in order to take back their homeland. She later comes to be the mistress of a high ranking japanese commander, General Kaimura (Harold Huber), and repeats her beliefs to him about china deserving to be under the rule of Hirohito's empire. This gets her on Kaimura's good side and she is allowed to be in his presence from this point on, but Kwan is only doing this to get him to lower his guard. Meanwhile, the japanese have also shot down two American fighter pilots sent to assist china's efforts and captured them. The freedom fighters under Kwan's command eventually manage to rescue them, but a pivotal moment happens when some of her followers are threatened with being executed by firing squad. The general and Kwan (now his mistress) watch as several of them are about to be shot, but Kwan gets the general to change his mind. His new decision isn't much better, since he orders his men to kill the fathers of the accused instead. This incident causes relations to sour between Kwan and some of her followers, since she just sat there smiling as several people were executed. Little do they realize, she had to refuse to act or else the general would discover her intentions. After Kwan herself returns to the partisans to explain why she had to behave this way, her followers free the american pilots, much to Kaimura's frustration. In her last confrontation with him, Kwan tells Kaimura her true motives and shoots him. Knowing he is about to die, he orders Kwan to be executed. As she is seconds away from being shot, Kwan says how even though merciless cruelty and bullets can kill her fellow citizens, they can never destroy the foundations of china. Kwan is dead, but her actions have saved many people from violent fates at the hands of the japanese and inspired more chinese to fight for their country. This a pretty good movie. It's a bit confusing at times because the short runtime of 66 minutes didn't really allow for the telling of a very coherent story, so events here seem to move faster than they should. The ending of this movie was surprisingly dark and I didn't see it coming. Two of the film's most important characters are both killed by each other. More importantly, I liked how they implemented actual ww2 history into the movie, such as when they mention the captured american pilots being part of the Flying Tigers. More officially known as the American Volunteer Group, they were a number of fighter plane squadrons sent by the US government to fight japanese aircraft over chinese skies. What makes their story so interesting is how the Flying Tigers started fighting in April 1941, months before america was even in the war. As a consequence, american pilots serving in the group had to lie and sign up as chinese pilots so as not to provoke a declaration of war from japan. Overall, I liked this movie because not only is it world war 2 oriented, but it takes place in china; a country whose role in the war is often ignored.
Review of Lady from Chungking
