IMDb RATING
5.9/10
1.3K
YOUR RATING
The lives of a small Chinese village are turned upside down when the Japanese invade it, and a heroic young woman leads her fellow villagers in an uprising against these invaders.The lives of a small Chinese village are turned upside down when the Japanese invade it, and a heroic young woman leads her fellow villagers in an uprising against these invaders.The lives of a small Chinese village are turned upside down when the Japanese invade it, and a heroic young woman leads her fellow villagers in an uprising against these invaders.
- Nominated for 2 Oscars
- 2 nominations total
Philip Ahn
- Leader of City People
- (uncredited)
Albert Baldo
- Japanese Soldier
- (uncredited)
- Directors
- Writers
- All cast & crew
- Production, box office & more at IMDbPro
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaFilmed in 1943 on the MGM lot in Culver City, CA, the film features an unusual assortment of non-Asian actors with odd accents playing Chinese and Japanese: Russian-born and Stanislavski-trained Akim Tamiroff as Wu Lien; Turhan Bey, Viennese born son of a Turkish father and Czechoslovakian mother as the middle son, Lao Er Tan; New England patrician Katharine Hepburn as his wife; American Aline MacMahon--no longer one of the wisecracking Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933)--as the wife of Ling Tang; English-born Henry Travers (best remembered as Clarence the Angel from It's a Wonderful Life (1946)) as the Third Cousin"; Irish-American J. Carrol Naish as the Japanese Kitchen Overseer; and finally Jewish Robert Lewis, co-founder of the Actors Studio and Meryl Streep's teacher at the Yale Drama School, as Japanese Capt. Sato.
- ConnectionsEdited from The Good Earth (1937)
Featured review
Has spare, beautiful moments, with the horrors of war vividly portrayed
When hard-working China is attacked by the power-hungry Japanese, a pre-feminist Chinese woman struggles with her family for survival; eventually she and her husband become fighters in the Resistance and help to influence their family and fellow villagers to join them. Hollywood product, with intentions that seem sincere, adapted from a Pearl Buck novel and starring...Katharine Hepburn? Actually, Kate is not flossy or "regal" here; she's nobody's fool and probably knows she's miscast, but her Asian make-up is commendable and she tries (not in vain) to find a character. In support, Walter Huston and Aline MacMahon, as Hepburn's Old World in-laws, are excellent. The movie has beautiful cinematography and absorbing passages, but its length is self-defeating and there are some howlers in the script and in much of the casting. Not a hit at the box-office, but by this time people were so used to Hepburn's hit-or-miss choices that it didn't hurt her. *** from ****
helpful•183
- moonspinner55
- Jun 12, 2004
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Details
Box office
- Budget
- $3,000,000 (estimated)
- Runtime2 hours 28 minutes
- Aspect ratio
- 1.37 : 1
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