China (1943 film)

The script was based on Fourth Brother, an unproduced play by Archibald Forbes about an American oil salesman in China who joins in the fight against the Japanese with three Chinese guerrillas. Paramount bought the screen rights for $25,000 in May 1942.[6][7][8]

The film originally was considered a vehicle for Loretta Young, who was an enthusiastic supporter of China during the war[9] and who had just signed a three-year deal with Paramount to make two movies a year.[10] By September, Alan Ladd and William Bendix were assigned to the film, with John Farrow to direct, in colour.[11] Young pulled out, claiming she was dissatisfied with her role.[12] However, she appears to have changed her mind. "I thought it was going to be good", she said. "It was a war picture. It was full of action and a bit of vindictiveness... pretty little orphan girls."[13]

William Bendix was cast as Ladd's sidekick, a departure from the "heavy" that he had played in earlier roles. He would go on to play Ladd's sidekick in The Blue Dahlia (1946), Calcutta (1947) and The Deep Six (1958).[14]

Except for the three leads and a small supporting role of Ladd's girlfriend, all of the cast were Chinese, causing the filmmakers to look outside normal casting avenues.[15] Sen Yung, Philip Ahn and Richard Loo played lead supporting roles.[16]

Helena Kuo was meant to play a small role[17] but did not end up appearing in the film.

Filming started 27 October 1942.[18] In December Hedda Hopper wrote in her gossip column "wonder why so many battles between producer, director, Loretta Young and Alan Ladd on China? Could it be a bad story? Could be..."[19]

Loretta Young later said she objected to a scene where her character had to condone the suicide of one of the Chinese girls as she would not "propagandize suicide as the answer to anything". (Young was a devout Catholic.) She claimed Farrow and Paramount's head of production Buddy de Sylva agreed to cut the scene, but it reappeared in the script during production. Young refused once more and threatened to leave the film. The scene was not shot.[20]

Young also admitted she had difficulties with Alan Ladd. "He was a whiner and I hate that... Any man who calls for his agent every time he doesn't get his own way and his agent happens to be his wife (Sue Carol) there is something radically wrong. The last little thing that would happen, he'd be on the phone saying, 'Sue, you'd better get over here and straighten this out."[21]

"I don't remember hearing him laugh, or ever seeing him laugh", said Young. "Everything that concerned him was very serious."[22]

China was the third war film in a row John Farrow had directed after being discharged from the Canadian navy. Farrow was keen to make the movie as accurate as possible. "We have a big army and there are bound to be service men in every theatre", he said during the film's shoot. "Not only that, every mother's son has a mother – and you can bet she knows what it's all about too. As far as I'm concerned, when I decide to make a picture about anything – no matter what – I feel I should be truthful."[23]

Ladd was injured during filming the battle scenes, suffering a cut arm and sprained ankle.[24] He also had to make a 20-foot dive off a bridge, which former diver Ladd found easy.[25]

The scene where 4,000 Japanese troops were killed in explosion was thought to set a record for Japanese killed on screen in a Hollywood film.[26]

Paramount purchased the rights to "Work as One", a popular Chinese marching song by Shu Mo, to use in the film. Part of the purchase price went to the United China Relief Campaign Fund. The song was recorded by the All-Chinese Choir of the Chinese First Presbyterian Church of Los Angeles.[27]

Bosley Crowther in his film review for The New York Times, noted that Hollywood had churned out an unsatisfactory look at a topical subject, "... a small host of Chinese worthies play their countrymen in the accepted style. But the film scarcely does justice to their country — or to the title which it bears. By and large, it is Hollywood trumpery ..."[30]

The review in Variety was more charitable, noting, "Frank Butler generates authenticity in the dramatic evolvement of his screenplay [from a play by Archibald Forbes], while director John Farrow neatly blends the human and melodramatic elements of the yarn." [31]

The Los Angeles Times wrote that "the hostility expressed in some quarters towards China can probably be laid to the title as much as anything. Hollywood's penchant for the grandiose has a way of kicking back unexpectedly – and China, apparently, has got itself in the pan. Except in the narrow movie sense, it hardly justifies so sweeping a name. In the narrow movie sense the picture is, however, as good as most melodramas treating of some phase of the global war and – in certain moments of realism – rather better than that."[32]

Radley Metzger praised the film, saying John Farrow "brilliantly mastered" the technique of the tracking shot and that China "has the most fabulous shots I've ever seen."[33]