China Sky (1945) User Reviews

Proved Too Much To Swallow

[bkoganbing · 6/10 · 27 May 2006]

One of the most popular American authors of the 20th Century was Pearl S. Buck. A daughter of Presbyterian missionaries in China she developed a real love for the people there and her novels beginning with The Good Earth popularized China and its people in the USA.

Though her work remained popular, Buck never equaled what she did in The Good Earth as literature. She also never took note of other trends developing in China and she became quite the apologist for the Kuomintang government of Chiang Kai-shek with both its strengths and weaknesses.

Indirectly Buck was one of the people responsible for the Red Scare and the great question of who lost China in the USA as if it was our's to lose. Her work so popularized the Chinese here that when China went Communist in 1949, the shock was so great that it had to be some kind of conspiracy at work. So we went hunting for the conspirators.

Randolph Scott and Ruth Warrick are the kind of medical missionaries Buck idealized. Ruth's crushing on Randy real bad, but he can't see her except as a work partner. As the film opens he's off in America trying to get better equipment for the mission. Scott brings back a society wife in Ellen Drew also and the hostility between the two women develops immediately. Very similar to the plot line in The Good Earth where Paul Muni takes a second wife, a kind of Chinese trophy wife.

Meanwhile guerrilla leader Anthony Quinn brings a wounded Japanese Colonel played by Richard Loo to the mission. He wants him healed so he can be tried for war crime atrocities, a very early mention of that concept.

Loo made a career in playing nasty Japanese folks during World War II and after. Played them all with a Fu Manchu kind of sneer. He's a shrewd article though as he works on the jealousies of both Drew and Korean doctor Philip Ahn who's crushing out himself on Carol Thurston who has eyes for Quinn.

Romance, jealousy, and war are the hallmarks of China Sky. This story set in a remote corner of western China is a bit much to believe. Spoiled society brat that she is, the viewer is going to have a lot of trouble with Drew's pouting about the fact that this little village ain't Park Avenue. Was she that dumb that she didn't know what she was getting into?

Today we could never get away with casting occidental types like Anthony Quinn and Carol Thurston as Chinese even though both give fine performances. Quinn especially. Quinn, Jose Ferrer, and J. Carrol Naish probably played more ethnic types than any other players in film history.

War of some kind was a factor in China from the overthrow of the Manchu Dynasty in 1911 until the Communists won in 1949. The issues are very complex and a film like China Sky isn't the venue for a discussion of same.

Through probably not faithful to Pearl Buck, it's quite a good movie

[vincentlynch-moonoi · 7/10 · 23 April 2015]

If you are looking for a faithful telling of a Pearl Buck novel, my guess is (though I have not read Buck) that this is not it. If you are looking for a typical Hollywood melodrama -- albeit set in China -- then you'll probably enjoy this flick. I rather liked it.

It's a love triangle between an American male doctor (Randolph Scott), a female American doctor (Ruth Warrick) who is subtly in love with him, and a new American wife (Ellen Drew) who has other plans for her new husband that do not include China.

The cast here is quite strong. I always preferred Randolph Scott in this era of his career, rather than later when he mostly did Westerns. He's very good here as the romantic lead.

Ruth Warrick is really good as Dr. Sara Durand. I was not very familiar with her, but -- at least here -- I enjoyed her performance.

I couldn't quite decide if I disliked Ellen Drew as Louise Thompson, or I just disliked her role. At any rate, she plays it for all its worth.

Anthony Quinn is very interesting here as a sort of Chinese war lord. He actually looks authentic (with the eye makeup), and of course, this was that era in his career when he played a variety of ethnic characters.

Carol Thurston as a Chinese nurse is interesting. Made up well, she appeared to be Chinese.

Richard Loo as Colonel Yasuda -- the evil Japanese -- overplays the role a bit by always shining his teeth in a way that's very unreal.

Ducky Louie is a heck of a good Chinese child actor.

Philip Ahn as a Koren-Japanese doctor is very good and brings some intrigue into the film in a sub plot.

I enjoyed this film as a slightly different angle of a World War II romance.

Interesting, but not a great movie.

[biker451 · 5/10 · 2 January 2003]

China Sky is interesting as it shows a side of WWII that is seldom seen, the war in China. Few realize the enormity of what the Japanese did to China and it is seldom seen on television or in the movies. This gives at least a glimpse into that world.

The story was written by Pearl S. Buck. It has some of the worst dialog I've seen in a movie in many years. The story is predictable, and there is not one thing in the plot that comes as a surprise. The acting is a bit better than the dialog, but that really isn't saying much.

This movie is worth watching if for nothing else but the subject matter, but if one is expecting to be entertained please watch something else.

Ruth Warrick & Ellen Drew square off----

[Ishallwearpurple · 22 April 2004]

----to fight over Randolph Scott in WWII China. Anthony Quinn, in an early role, plays the leader of the mountain fighters after the Japanese have taken over much of the country.

Scott and Warrick are doctors in hospital at the village that supports the fighters. At the beginning of the film, Scott has gone back to America to raise funds for supplies and while there, meets and marries a spoiled beauty (Drew) and brings her back to the daily air raids and death at the village.

Warrick, who has always loved her fellow doctor, tries to make the best of the situation, but as the weeks go by it becomes clear that Drew only came back with Scott to make him see that he should leave the war zone and come back with her to America.

The verbal cat fight scenes between Warrick and Drew are the best part of the film. The people of the village being herded into the mountain caves during air raids; the fight near the end between the invaders and the mountain fighters and villagers, is handled very well.

Despite the "A" list performers, this was considered a "B" film for the lower half of a double bill in the war years. As a preteen who first saw this the year it came out, I remember the Sat. matinee kids cheering for the good guys and booing the baddies. Watch it for a look at the past. 7/10

Better Than I Expected

[DKosty123 · 7/10 · 16 February 2018]

This film is an interesting mix of what you'd expect, but then what you do not. We not only have Anthony Quinn playing an Asian, we have Korean actors playing Japanese. Scott is playing a hero, and actually brings his role as a Doctor over so much that it is convincing.

Rather than list the cast, let's just say everyone is quite effective from Scott and Warrick to the young boy playing the Goat. The story is based on a novel about the war in Asia and this film is one of the earlier ones about that part of the war..

Scott, the American Doctor who is coming back a hero, from the US raising money for his Hospital, near the front with the Japanese in China. He brings a new wife who is not quite ready for the facing pf air raids, and wants to take her huband away from there back to the US. The plot gets a bit more twisted bacause of the beautiful woman doctor he works with, the Chinese Doctor and the Japanese War Prisoner. Couple those with the Chinese Undergound and there are a few twists.

The best thing about the film is the fighting sequences look better here than in other war films made this decade. The diverse cast brings off a good film despite the fact they are playing roles other than the expected ones. The love and tragic story is done pretty well. One major flaw though, late in the film Scott gets shot, and then in the next scene and the rest of the film, there is no sign he was ever wounded.

Engaging, but a little too predictable war melodrama.

[Clothes-Off · 6/10 · 23 April 2010]

Randolph Scott gets top billing, but ultimately this is Ruth Warrick's picture. She's a doctor holding together a makeshift hospital in China while its founder (Scott) is on his way back with much needed supplies--and a new wife, to her thinly-veiled disappointment. Having seen Warrick in a few other 1940s films, I can understand why the doc failed to notice her: despite her attractiveness, she never really exuded any sex appeal. But her character is very likable, while the new wife's shallowness becomes apparent within minutes of her entrance. And that's the problem with this picture--too easy. In fact, all it does is lower the audience's opinion of the foolish doctor for not seeing what's painfully apparent even to the other character's who don't speak the language. There's a similar subplot involving another doctor and a nurse, that's equally obvious. A wounded Japanese villain provides more action for the story, whose loose ends get tied up all too neatly and quickly. Either Pearl S. Buck's original novel just wasn't one of her better ones, or this movie doesn't do it justice. Nevertheless, it probably made for a decent lead-in on a double-feature back in the day.

Pearl S. Buck writes again!

[JohnHowardReid · 6/10 · 2 June 2018]

It's hard to believe that this cliched, relentlessly melodramatic triangle hospital soaper had its genesis in a novel by Nobel-prize-winning author Pearl S. Buck. True, it is set against a rather realistic WW2 background. The RKO miniatures specialists and the stock footage department work overtime to blow up buildings and wreak destruction. But few people will swallow either the main plot or its two equally hackneyed sub-plots, one involving a ridiculously caricatured Japanese colonel (played with heavily theatrical over-emphasis by Richard Loo), the other featuring Anthony Quinn under Oriental make-up as a loyalist resistance fighter.

Poor Philip Ahn is caught in the middle of both sub-plots, but even he can do little with his radio-serial lines and weak-kneed characterization. Ellen Drew has the thankless role of the unsympathetic wife, while Ruth Warrick dispenses blank goody-goodiness, and Randolph Scott doctors on doggedly. As for Ducky Louie, Carol Thurston and the rest of the mainly Chinese players, we will pass over their efforts in silence.

By some quirk that is difficult to understand from today's perspective, China Sky was quite successful at the box-office. I would have thought it fell between two stools - too much action for the girls, far too much soppy romance for the boys.

The Director: Known as a reliable work-horse, Ray Enright was under contract to Warner Bros. from 1929 to 1941. Enright commenced freelancing in 1942 with his best-known film The Spoilers, starring John Wayne and Randolph Scott. In fact he seems to have reached his stride with westerns such as Trail Street, Albuquerque, Coroner Creek, South of St Louis, Montana, Kansas Raiders and Flaming Feather.

Anthony Quinn plays a Chinese man...'nuff said!

[planktonrules · 2/10 · 25 August 2010]

"China Sky" is a film set in China and it does feature some Asian-American actors. However, oddly, the film also features Anthony Quinn in one of the leading roles and he, too, plays someone who is Chinese! Other than Mantan Moreland or Willie Best, I can't think of an actor who looked LESS Chinese than Quinn! I know he did have a reputation as a man who could play many, many different nationalities, but this is ridiculous. However, such bizarre casting is not very unusual. During this same era in Hollywood, such obviously non-Asian actors as Walter Huston and even Kathrine Hepburn were picked to play these sort of roles! Plus, Carol Thurston also plays one of natives in "China Sky" and is pretty clearly not Asian.

This film was made near the end of WWII and is set in a hospital in China during their war with Japan. Ruth Warrick plays Dr. Sara--a single and pretty lady working in China during the war. Considering she's pretty much on her own there, it seems a bit ridiculous. As the film begins, Dr. Gray (Randolph Scott) returns--and Dr. Sara is excited...until she sees that Gray has brought along his new wife (Ellen Drew). This is a problem, as it's obvious that the good Dr. Sara wanted him for herself and the new wife is quite a surprise! Soon the new wife is revealed to be a shallow shrew--and unsheathes her claws on Dr. Sara! At this point it's obvious that by the end of the film the wife will be history and Dr. Sara will have her good Doctor for herself. In fact, it was downright silly as the dumb wife inexplicably ran through the middle of a gunfight (with machine guns even) only to die--thus freeing up the doctors to fall in love!! Oooo, this really pained me it was so clichéd!

At the same time there is a parallel story involving a stereotypically evil Japanese commander who is being held prisoner. He somehow manages to get a Korean doctor to help him--though this makes absolutely no sense at all considering what the Japanese had done to Korea as well as the guy being a doctor.

This film suffers from some of the worst mock Chinese dialog I have ever heard. All the Chinese people seem quaintly inscrutable and a bit like happy savages--and I am sure any Asian watching the film would be pretty ticked off by these portrayals. Never do they really seem like people! And, aside from the new wife, all the white folks in the film are noble--too noble. In fact, no one at all in the film seems real in the least.

Overall, there really isn't a whole lot to recommend the film. The romantic triangle could have been pretty interesting---but none of the rest of the film was believable or worthwhile. The only reason I watched is because I would watch Randolph Scott in anything--and as usual he did a nice job, though the film was clearly beneath his talents. Not a good film by any stretch of the imagination.

Keep Moving. Nothing To See Here.

[rmax304823 · 4/10 · 19 August 2013]

The very definition of "programmer." Randolph Scott and the two ladies that form the other points of the triangle are okay, but Anthony Quinn with his pasted-back eyelids is a heavy cross for any movie to bear, even for 1945. It doesn't help that the dialog, as usual, is given to the foreigners without any contractions. "You will help or we will die." The Korean Philip Ahn is Scott's doctor colleague and he ponders his torn allegiances with precise diction. Richard Loo, a Hawaiian-born Chinese, is a perennial Japanese ghoul in these war-time flicks, sinister and sneering.

It's an inexpensive movie, a love story set amid the Japanese invasion of China, and it looks slack and limp. The Chinese hills look like California hills. Actors hit their spot and say their lines, look disturbed or happy, and then walk away.

It's good that it was made, though. After the Japanese invasion, the slaughter in China was enormous. It's not something the West likes to think about too often now, because Japan is now our friend, while China is a communist country that sells us cheap goods. Gosh.

Japanese bombers and paratroopers harass Chinese village and American hospital.

[weezeralfalfa · 8/10 · 23 April 2015]

Filmed as WWII in the Pacific was coming to a conclusion, this adaptation of the Pearl Buck novel of the same name deals with the Japanese invasion of China some years before WWII began. The reviews here thus far have been pretty negative, sometimes scathing. My review will be more positive.

I haven't read the novel. However, I did consult a summary. The film follows the novel in most respects , until the last part, when the Japanese paratrooper invasion is added, and the ending is changed to more conform to the expectations of a morality play. Buck's traitorous Chinese Dr. Chung is transformed into the traitorous Korean-Japanese Dr. Kim, apparently for political reasons. His equally traitorous brother is deleted, as is Ya-ching: a nurse having an affair with Dr. Chung, while he is courting the more desirable intern Siu-mei, as dramatized. Siu-mei's father, who doesn't like Dr. Chung, and approves her infatuation with guerrilla leader Chen-ta, is also deleted. The Englishman in a nearby town, who develops an affair with Louise: the bored socialite wife of missionary Dr. Thompson, is also deleted. Thus, the several romantic triangles in the film are actually more complicated in the novel, with deleted characters also involved.

The screenplay takes place exclusively in and around a fictional Chinese village, in a region with many caves, which come in handy as safe havens when bombs are dropped on the village(a frequent occurrence). They also serve as hideouts of the local guerrilla forces, and for making and storing their munitions and other necessities.

Dr. Gray Thompson(Scott), from a wealthy family, chose to spearhead the building of a mission hospital in this village, which the Japanese consider rather important, but their ground troops haven't yet reached it. However, he's back in the US, securing additional funding and equipment. Meanwhile, American doctor Sara Durand is in charge of the hospital, with supposedly full Korean Dr. Kim in charge of the men's section. Kim is disgruntled that he is under the authority of a woman: something unheard of in Korea. Sara clearly is upset when she receives a telegram that Gray will arrive, with his(new ) wife, Louise . It doesn't take Louise long to imagine that Sara was hoping to eventually become Gray's wife, although Gray had shown no signs of thinking of her in a romantic way. Louise becomes increasingly paranoid about a denied romantic relationship between the 2, as they spend most of their waking hours in the hospital. Also, she much fears (with good reason) the frequent bombings, and feels no connection with the Chinese or her surroundings. Gray tries to reassure her of his love, and balks at her demand to quit this life and return to the US.

Meanwhile, Dr. Kim feels alienated by the evidence that his girlfriend , intern Siu-mei, actually more likes guerilla chief Chen-ta. Thus, he finally gives in to the requests of captured hospitalized Japanese Colonel Yasuda that he make him seem more sick than he is, to delay a public trial as a war criminal, and to arrange for a telegram to be sent to the Japanese military. Louise unknowingly becomes involved in this plot when Kim claims he can arrange for a plane to take her and Gray safely out of China. Kim thinks Yasuda's idea is that he will also be on this plane., But actually, the coded telegram that Yasuda has written asks for a paratrooper drop. After house boy 'Little Goat' reveals what he has seen, Gray gets very suspicious of some dealing between Kim and Yasuda, and confronts them. Yasuda pulls out a stolen pistol and shoots at them, killing Kim, escaping to meet the paratroopers. Gray quickly organizes a village defense against the Japs, and Chen Ta rallies his cavalry to ride to the village. A battle ensures, with the Japanese presumably eventually being vanquished, although this is not shown. During the battle, Louise, in the hospital, becomes hysterical, partly from her indirect role in summoning the paratroopers. She rushes outside, into the line of fire, presumably trying to reach Gray, and is shot dead by the Japs, thus ending Gray's romantic dilemma. Siu-Mei's romantic dilemma is also solved by Kim's death.(In the novel, Louise returns to the U.S. without Gray).

Most reviewers here decry the casting of Mexican Anthony Quinn as Chen-Ta, as an intolerable phoniness. Well, in his career, Quinn was cast as many types of ethnics, including a Berber chieftain, and even the Prophet Muhammad. But, he always looked basically Mexican. At least, he was made up to look more oriental than was Peter Lorre, in "They Met in Bombay", and later in "Around the World in 80 Days". Caucasian Carol Thurston, who also commonly was cast as various ethnics, was acceptably made up to look Chinese. Young Ducky Louie, as houseboy 'Little Goat', provided some reprieve from the tense drama, with his charm and rapport with Scott. I thought Scott, Ruth Warwick, as Sarah, and Ellen Drew, as Louise, played their roles well. Richard Loo overdoes his characterization of a despicable Japanese, but consider the mindset of most Americans and Chinese at this time.

Some complain there's not enough action. How many times do you want the Japs to bomb his village? What about the battle near the end, not to mention the frequent battles between the main characters before. With a little more care in the screenplay and production, this could have been a first rate drama, with an exotic setting, to add interest.

wartime propaganda melodrama

[SnoopyStyle · 5/10 · 15 August 2022]

China has been fighting for eight years against the Japanese. Dr. Gray Thompson (Randolph Scott) and Dr. Sara Durand (Ruth Warrick) are struggling to maintain their hospital with the war approaching. To her surprise, Gray is return with a wife (Ellen Drew). Chen-Ta (Anthony Quinn), leader of the local militia, brings in an injured Japanese war criminal.

This is old Hollywood and its yellow-face acting. It's not the best look and has not aged well. They do have some Asian actors in lesser roles. I was going to complain about Dr. Kim but there is a reason to have a Korean in the mix. As for the three white roles, I don't like the glam-up. It really doesn't fit the harsh reality of war. I can see the wife being a fish out of water. The other two should not be well dressed at all. It really destroys the realism of the war. At the end of the day, this is a propaganda film in the closing days of the war. It shows the dire war situation in China but the pulpy love triangle is bothersome. It is less than what it should be.

Scottie does a great job

[HotToastyRag · 8/10 · 22 July 2021]

Randolph Scott started off his career in a variety of 1930s films, and when WWII started, he supported the troops (since an injury from the previous war prevented him from obtaining a commission) both by live performances and by making war pictures. Of course, in the 1950s, he exclusively made westerns. So if you want to catch him playing a medical doctor, you've only got two chances: Broken Dreams and China Sky.

In China Sky, Scottie runs a hospital in war-torn China. He's competent, fair, understanding, and has the love of a good woman by his side - only he doesn't know it. His faithful nurse, Ruth Warrick, is totally (and silently) in love with him. She knows his only passion is medicine, and during the uncertain wartime years, he couldn't possibly think of anything else but helping the wounded. Or can he?

I really liked this movie. It's not your typical war movie, and it's not your typical medical drama. The romance, while not the main focal point, is also compelling. Scottie does a great job, speaking Chinese and convincing the audience that he knows what he's doing on the operating table. If you only know him from his westerns, rent this movie. You'll also see a large number of Asian actors (and Anthony Quinn in his pre-stardom) with sizable parts, which was very unusual at the time and very much appreciated: Richard Loo, Benson Fong, H. T. Tsiang, and of course veteran actor Philip Ahn.