China Gate [Blu-ray]

Zero extras. Considering this is a good, and important Fuller, a commentary by a Fuller scholar would be nice. Subtitles would be appropriate, especially at this price point. But the print is great. A welcome addition to my Fuller collection.

Every macho filmmaker has to make his own "Bunch of Guys on a Dangerous Mission"movie, to quote Quentin Tarantino ("Inglourious Basterds.") In 1957, tough littlecigar-chomping, shoot pistol instead of saying "Action!" writer-producer-directorSamuel Fuller made "China Gate," about a nationality-mixed squad of French ForeignLegionnaires and a curvy Eurasian doll with tumbling hair under a Chairman Mao cap.They travel up a Vietnamese river by sampan and then march through the perilous wildsto blow up a cave packed with Russian-made bombs and shells, and confront a death-dealing Red Army Major who says, "We'll bomb anything-- that's why we'll win."Call it "Apocalypse on a Fake Far-East Movie Set." The leader of the band is Brock, played by an uncharacteristically rugged GeneBarry. The curvy Eurasian doll is Lea, or Lucky Legs (Angie Dickinson), and we aretreated to the sight of her long delectable ones stretched all the way across theCinemascope picture by way of introduction. She married Brock, but the racist heeldeserted her and their baby son because the boy had, Brock said, "Chi-neese eyes."Lea, a double agent, has agreed to lead the squad to the Red ammo dump in thenorthward "China Gate" in return for taking her son to America. Along the dangerous journey, we get some insight into the mercenaries of thismotley gang. There is Goldie (Nat "King" Cole), a vet of WW II and Korean Warwho likes to sing as he cleans his "grease-gun." There's a tough Greek, twoFrenchmen, a Vietnamese, a P.T.S.D. Hungarian who is haunted by a Russian soldierhe killed in Budapest, a German of the Hermann Goering Division who proves NOTto be a rat, and Lea's cousin Leung, who gets the thankless "coolie" job.Generally they detest Brock as much as Lea does. 1950's movie fans will enjoy Lee Van Cleef as Major Cham, a formerly sensitiveschoolteacher who has grown to love blasting villages. He shows off the ammo caveto sexy Lea and gloats, "This is my kind of Garden, my kind of Revelation!" Hefalls hard for that sexy Eurasian Mata Hara. She shrugs, "I'm a little ofeverything and alot of nothing." Other good lines are given to the German, whoavers, "I always get hurt where it doesn't show," and the Greek, who gasps, "I don'tlike for people to watch me die." Brock replies, "We don't like it either."The most prescient line of all goes to Cpl. Pigalle. When told that the Americansare his friends, he retorts, "I don't see them fighting over here in their ownuniforms!" I really appreciate Sam Fuller because he tells you at the movie's beginningWHERE you are and WHEN. Here we see the stoic-faced little boy running throughthe rubble of "the last free village in the North. The year is 1954, the dayThursday. All animals have been eaten. All...but one." The boy is hiding afrightened puppy under his shirt, and a ragged, silent, hungry-eyed Philip Ahnadvances toward them, pulling out a blade that shines in the sun like a flame.The kid runs for the safety of a French machine-gun post behind sandbags. Themessage is clear: you can trust the French even if you can't trust your ownneighbor. Fuller regular Paul Dubov is reassuring as Capt. Caumont. Victor Young and Harold Adamson wrote a wonderful theme song for "China Gate,"which reflects the majesty and tragedy of Vietnam's history. Nat "King" Colesings: "China Gate, China Gate, many dreams and many hearts you separate. Like two arms open wide, some you welcome in, and some must stay outside. Bowl of rice, bitter tea, is this all the good earth has to offer me? Will I find peace of mind? Does my true love wait behind the China Gate?" The DVD from Olive Films has excellent b/w picture and sound, although with somenoticeable video speckles. There are no extras. The sound did not kick in untilI started the movie from the "Scenes" option. For the price, I would expect better.

I'm giving this VHS version 4 stars instead of the 5 it really deserves because the current cropped VHS version does a grave injustice to Samuel Fuller's visual style and his creative use of cinemascope. When the film was available on 16mm I used to run it in my Samuel Fuller class to show students the type of innovative work several films exhibited in the 1950s. As it stands at the moment, the VHS cropped, pan and scan version represents a travesty of an outstanding film. As the other reviewer has noted, CHINA GATE is one of the first American films to deal with the Indo-China conflict that formed the prequel to the Vietnam War. But the casting of Angie Dickinson and Lee Van Cleef as Eurasians is not as bizarre as several reviewers noted. Lucky Legs (Dickinson) has been abandoned by Brock (Gene Barry) due to his racist reaction against his newborn son who looks Oriental. The film thus takes a more incisive look at American racism than does THE GREEN BERETS a decade later. By contrast, Lee Van Cleef's Viet-Minh commissar is a more humane end educated man than his American counterpart. He wishes to adopt Brock's son and Lucky Legs and provide the home Brock refuses to give them. However, Lucky Legs wishes her son to be an American despite her personal experience of racism from a man from "the land of the free." Like RUN OF THE ARROW, CHINA GATE deals with the complex issue of American identity and pulls no punches. Nat King Cole's Goldie has lost his wife to cancer, lives only for killing "commies", and condemns his white American counterpart for deserting his wife and child. It is one of the best performances Cole ever delivered in any American film. But, as well as exhibiting Samuel Fuller's baroque visual style indebted to yellow journalism and the comic strip (which Jean Luc-Godard appropriated in the Vietnam sequence of PIERROT LE FOU a decade later), the film opens with documentary footage before it moves on to its fictional component. As early as 1957, Fuller has already begun to blur the boundaries between documentary "reality" and "fictional" narrative to raise issues usually related to the alternative realm of experimental cinema, boundaries that were not generally questioned in contemporary Hollywood narrative. Far from being a perversely bizarre film disdained by most mainstream reviewers, past and present, CHINA GATE is actually a more challenging work dealing seriously with issues of American politics, history, and racial identity than any of its contempories. It is a film urgently needed DVD restoration restoring it to its original widescreen format with audio-commentaries by Fuller critics of the caliber of Bill Krohn and Jonathan Rosenbaum. Hopefully, some enterprising company should begin to do this soon.

Angie Dickinson, Gene Berry & Nat King Cole team up as a Foreign Legion special ops force fighting the commies in Indochina. Does it get any better? Yes, it does! Great supporting cast makes you care about the fate of each character. The movie "The Green Berets," particularly the second half, borrowed a lot from this movie. So if you liked "The Green Berets," this is your "prequel." Title song sung by Nat King Cole, who also turns in a "not to be missed" performance as a Korean War veteran fighting for the French Union in Indochina.

Le film contient de superbes décors de guerre avec des bâtiments et des bouts de rues complètement détruites. L'autre partie des décors sont des décors de jungle construits dans un studio où se déroulera le film dans la nuit.L'intérêt du film est de montrer la guerre en Indochine conduite par les Français. Car il s'agit ici d'un commando de l'armée française avec un américain qui vont tenter de détruire un dépôt d'armes pour éviter que les parties françaises de l'Indochine soient bombardées par les communistes.Ce prétexte permet à Samuel Fuller de construire un film de guerre efficace, mais aussi de parler de sujets comme le racisme et les problèmes psychologiques liés à la guerre.Samuel Fuller ne montre pas de héros, car aucun des personnages n'en est un, si ce n'est peut-être celui d'Angie Dickinson qui interprète une Indochinoise qui a eu un enfant avec un américain. Elle aide le commando à se diriger dans la jungle jusqu'au village communiste qui héberge les armes.Une des curiosités du film est Lee Van Cleef dans un rôle très court qui interprète le chef communiste des Indochinois. Curiosité, car c'est un personnage avec des dialogues (sa filmographie l'a souvent utilisé dans des rôles peu loquaces).Sinon le système Samuel Fuller fonctionne pleinement: un mélange de bric et de broc, de plans de studio, de plans en décors réels, de stock-shots documentaires, montés ensemble; ou alors des dialogues ampoulés par moment, mais qui sont efficaces. Et une direction d'acteur plutôt efficace qui fait que chacun des personnages à sa fonction. Le tout fonctionne plutôt bien et reste captivant jusqu'au bout. Évidemment un des messages du film est aussi de montrer l'horreur, les bêtises et l'absurdité de la guerre.C'est-à-dire que nous ne sommes pas dans la subtilité, les messages de Samuel Fuller sont bien enfoncés de manière bien insistante pour que le spectateur les capte le bien.Au total le film reste très intéressant, car mine de rien il y a très peu de films qui parlent des soldats français pendant la guerre d'Indochine !

*contains spoilersColonial Indo-China, 1954. French foreign legionnaire and 'dynamiter', sergeant Brock [Gene Barry] is assigned the task of infiltrating to the 'China Gate' on the Vietnamese/Chinese border and blowing up the ordnance hidden within the hills. For this, he needs 'Lucky Legs' [Angie Dickinson], a Eurasian, 'half-caste' beauty of dubious repute - she's a black-marketeer, an opium dealer, a prostitute and bar owner [which presumably, doubles as a brothel] - who crosses the lines delivering bottles of cognac to the Viet Minh. There's a problem though - Brock and Lucky Legs were once married and their child looks fully Chinese. You see, Brock is a maladjusted 'weasel' and so prejudiced, he walked out and left her. Lucky never told him she was half-Chinese and her child was a 'throwback' - "I never figured it'd be such a one-sided birth'' - with Chinese characteristics. Lucky agrees to go as long as her child is taken to America and brought up there. Along for the suicidal mission is Goldie [crooner, Nat 'King' Cole] and Fuller regulars, Paul Dubov [as Captain Caumont] and Neyle Morrow [as Leung]. Brock, like the others, is a soldier of fortune seeking out his next war - "Korea got cold and Indo-China got hot" - justifying to himself why he does it - "I don't particularly like Commies and France was left holding the bag." As there a "lotta live Commies around'" at the China Gate, Brock is eager to prove his point. As Lucky says to ruthless Brock, you've ''travelled all over the world but hadn't learned anything''. One by one the patrol die in unfortunate, ironic circumstances - one breaks his back, another steps on a mine - until the final few reach the China Gate to face Major Cham [Lee Van Cleef], another half-Chinese who has been picked for better things by the Communist leadership. Will our heroes complete their mission? Will Cham make it to Moscow? Will Lucky make it to the USA?Directed, produced and written by cigar-chomping, cinematic-auteur, Sam Fuller, it was filmed in the then popular, widescreen process of Cinemascope - he'd shot previous films, Hell and High Water [1954], and House of Bamboo [1955] in 'Scope' and was by now, comfortable with the format. Released in 1957, it was filmed at the 20th Century Fox studios and backlot and released by them although the production company was actually, Globe Enterprises [which one guesses was Fuller's own company - they would produce his next five films from Run of the Arrow [1957] to Underworld USA [1961]]. It was Fuller's penultimate movie for Fox - Forty Guns [1957] was the last - and I'd suggest this and Park Row [1953] are his least well known 1950's films. Compared to his mid-50's movies starring the likes of Robert Ryan and Richard Widmark, this one has a lesser cast reflecting its lower budget that according to Wikipedia was made for only $150,000, a tiny amount compared with other films of the time.I love a good Fuller film but I'm not sure I've ever seen this one and I don't recall it ever being on TV. It has all the usual Fuller elements - the bludgeoning style, a focus on racism and prejudice, [true] anecdotes from his time in the 1st Infantry Division aka the 'Big Red One', the mainly studio setting, the roving, prowling camera and the gritty, in-your-face dialogue that only Fuller could write. The cast, especially Cole, are great and Dickinson makes an impression as the sympathetic Lucky in an early film performance. As you would expect, the action sequences are terrific. One quibble is that there's more than the usual back-projection and mattes which is almost certainly because of the budget restraints. I'm sure I've seen that model plane work somewhere else too. Although, a lesser Fuller work, it is still worth checking out although today it would be considered 'racist'. In these days of 'snowflakery', some of those prone to offence may need a fainting couch nearby when they watch this.The blu-ray by French company, Carlotta - plays in English and fortunately, the French subtitles are removable rather than 'burned in'. The picture on the whole is pretty good and the image can at times be very well defined however there are times when it looks a bit fuzzy-looking. Check, about 10 minutes in, with Angie Dickinson on the screen as it keeps going from 'soft' to defined. The only other slight problem are the vertical lines but they're not exactly distracting. Naturally, the copious amount of stock footage at the beginning is of lesser quality. The sound is mostly clear although the different accents the cast use can at times be hard to decipher. There is an excellent 40 minute documentary featuring Fuller's widow and daughter where they discuss, China Gate. Fuller's widow has no time for the Brock character and refers to him as 'the bast ard'. There are also mentions of cinematographer, Joseph Biroc, art-director, John Mansbridge and musician, Max Steiner. Apparently, Fuller would read newspaper articles and form stories from them while picking film titles from the headlines. You suspect, the bit about the priest being labelled a 'capitalist spy' and having his leg cut off by the Viet Minh was something he'd read in a newspaper. Interestingly, the censors weren't happy with the amount of leg shown by Lucky. There are no English subtitles.

I remember seeing this movie many years ago and over the years I only remembered that Nat King Cole was one of the actors. It is still a good story with a good cast of actors.

The quality of image and sound are good. The story of te movie is entertainig but at moments cliche.

B class movie