LOVE IS A MANY-SPLENDORED THING: Blu-ray (2oth Century-Fox 1955) Twilight Time
When Henry
King’s Love Is A Many-Splendored Thing
(1955) had its world premiere the Los Angeles Herald Examiner justly proclaimed
“rarely has the screen given us a
sensitive love story told with such delicate grace.” Indeed – producer
Buddy Adler’s quintessential romance is also an ode to his own deeply felt
probing and profoundly explorative themes of culture clash and forbidden love.
In the intervening decades this movie has remained much beloved by audiences, the
sincerity in its storytelling rivaled by its tone poem quality. This draws a
parallel between the lives we are forced to live and those we sincerely long
for in our fiction, too far removed from reality to ever truly be ours – at
least, for very long. The film’s protagonist, Eurasian doctor, Han Suyin
(Jennifer Jones) instinctively knows that fate and love are a thorny twine that
clings, yet tears at the heart; her more pragmatic lover, U.S. war
correspondent Mark Elliot (William Holden) unaccustomed to the prophetic
superstitions of the Far East and thus weary to believe in the repercussions
that have been set against their own chances for everlasting happiness.
Superficially, Love Is A Many-Splendored Thing is a
love story, ravishingly bedecked in its Asian silks and some truly stunning
location cinematography in Hong Kong – circa 1949 (actually 1954). Immediately
following the pomp and circumstance of the studio’s trademark fanfare
(orchestrated in improved 4 track stereo no less) the camera opens on a
breathtaking aerial panorama of Repulse Harbor and cluttered ramshackle of Hong
Kong’s British colony, wedged up against steep escarpments and bathed in a
majestic blue haze. This resplendent introduction is caught expansive within
Fox’s patented Cinemascope widescreen frame and luridly brought to life in
color by DeLuxe. The slow descend into the crowded city streets, following an
ambulance frantically racing up the tight and winding road to its hilltop
hospital, siren momentarily drowning out Alfred Newman’s iconic score, sets up a
conflict from within. John Patrick’s screenplay does not shy away from the
story’s subtext; the segregated attitudes toward the locals – and even more
directly – against Eurasians whose half-caste is barely tolerated by
colonialist snobberies.
No, Love Is A Many-Splendored Thing offers
the viewer an extraordinary diverse palette from the get-go, but particularly
within the conventions of its ‘traditional’ love story. The real Han Suyin
(born of Flemish/Chinese background as Rosalie Matilda Kuanghu Chow, who wrote
her semi-biographical novel under the pen name, Elizabeth Comber) tells her
tale simply, yet thought-provokingly. Suyin has based the novel on her own
real-life experiences with foreign journalist Ian Morrison. Yet, Suyin, like
King, Patrick and Adler, spares us the triteness of what might so easily have
devolved into a maudlin and prosaic affair. Her love is not boastful or even
richly orchestrated, but told from the vantage of a genuine heartache and loss.
We feel the story in our bones perhaps even before it begins, caught deep and
full-bodied in the strains of Alfred Newman’s exuberant, yet bittersweet
underscoring. This never fails to enthrall and, in fact, is instantly
recognizable even after only hearing a few bars for the very first time;
becoming a part of our own DNA as well as the film’s tapestry of life.
Han Suyin is a
widowed doctor come from China to intern at the hospital in Hong Kong;
determined to keep her heart locked away, while staunchly unashamed of her
Eurasian parentage. She meets a man who will change her mind but also
unintentionally break her heart, Mark Elliot – the foreign correspondent come
to the house party given by Adeline Palmer-Jones (Isobel Elsom) whose own
husband is, in fact, indulging in an affair with Suzanne (Jorja Curtright); a
former schoolgirl acquaintance of our good doctor. Unlike Han, Suzanne has made
every attempt to mask her mixed breeding from the world, proudly telling Han
that she can ‘pass for white’ – a masquerade sure to come in handy when the
Chinese come to invade Hong Kong and reclaim its British territories. In the
backdrop there is also the Korean conflict – more like a premonition than a
blimp on the radar of world events just yet – but destined to play a pivotal
role in Han and Mark’s love affair.
Despite her
medical training and pragmatic approach to love, Han Suyin is also driven by
ancient Chinese superstitions that seem to dictate her joy and foreboding; a
butterfly landing on the shoulder of her beloved, as example, signifies ‘a good
omen’ for their future, as do two beetles following one another into a tiny box
at a Chinese fortune tellers. Suyin tells Mark that she wants to hear
prophetically beautiful lies; and indeed, she is told exactly what she want to
hear by the mystic; all about a long life together in a large house with
fifteen children (pared down to four when Mark sympathetically inquires, “How many?!?”). Suyin is wise, but also
smart enough to know exactly how far she can trust herself. After a noonday
swim to the house of friends segues into a moonlit pas deux along the beachhead
(the lighting of two cigarettes with one flame herein an ever so slight
variation on the iconic and fondly recalled moment pilfered from 1942’s Now Voyager) Han tells Mark, “I have decided one thing. You will have
to decide for what is right for us.” When he suggests that she is the
stronger one she astutely points out that he is kind, and there is no greater
strength of character on this earth than compassion.
The film might
have luxuriated in such memorable platitudes to the point of absurdity as, in
point of fact, there are many memorable lines to crib from. We are spared the
indignation of this treacle by William Holden and Jennifer Jones’ supremely
understated performances; her remoteness an illusion put up to guard against a
wounded heart and the impeccable compliment to Holden’s unimpeded ‘congenial’
desire that lulls yet lures at the same time. Early on in this magnetic and
most unusual affair Mark asks if he can see Suyin again to which she, having
mistakenly assessed his motives as purely sexual, politely replies “I think not.” It takes Mark only a
moment to respond, “I think so,” before
bidding Suyin goodnight, his air of confidence itself a mask to conceal how
wounded he has been in his first marriage to a woman who we never see but whom
we are led to believe has been shrewish, controlling and manipulative in her
own contrivances to bar Mark from discovering true happiness with anyone else.
The romance
that is at the crux of Love Is A
Many-Splendored Thing is buffeted by a sort of stately exoticism; perhaps
Adler and Partick’s way of skirting around the production code’s cautioning Fox
over Han and Mark’s extra-marital affair. He is married, remember? And then, of
course, there is the troublesome veil of miscegenation to blunt – nervously
acknowledged within the code but barely tolerated by everyone in the film except
our protagonists. Suyin’s colleague, Dr. Sen (Kam Tong) is vehemently opposed
to her remaining in Hong Kong simply to be near Mark. China is on the move and
presumably on the march toward what he misperceives to be a brighter future. Yet
Sen exhibits an almost counter-colonialist attitude toward the British. As
already stated, Mrs. Palmer-Jones makes no bones about where she stands,
suggesting to Suyin that her husband – the managing director of the hospital -
might find it ‘difficult’ to renew Suyin’s passport, and therefore her stay in
Hong Kong, should her rumored affair with Mark continue.
Even Suyin’s
third uncle (Philip Ahn) is modestly opposed to their relationship –
particularly when Mark arrives unexpectedly in the dead of night to propose
marriage to Suyin. Third Uncle and the rest of Suyin’s family proceed to give
her trinkets of jade – the belief that the stone carries with it the essence of
the person who has worn it. This is a symbolic gesture. But it also illustrates
for Suyin and the audience that in choosing Mark she must give up something of
herself. Henceforth, her Chinese half will have to be contented with mere
reminders from without of the past – the jade she is now meant to carry with
her from now on.
If anything,
the Chinese sentiment sprinkled throughout the movie remains a mirror image of the
imperialist snobbery toward the indigenous culture over which they preside yet
curiously consider from a rather emotionless vantage as ‘foreign’ or ‘the
other’. In many ways this thematic
subtext foreshadows the big screen version of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s South Pacific (1958); or perhaps simply
augments the already ingrained popular consciousness put forth in the Broadway
original, wowing audiences since 1949.
Of all the
studios that might have considered making Love
Is A Many-Splendored Thing, perhaps no other was as well-suited to the task
as 20th Century-Fox; a studio whose track record for acquiring
novels of hard-hitting and progressive substance and realism had dealt a moral
compass and social conscience onto the palette of popular entertainment almost
from the start and that, by 1955, was legendary. Adler’s commitment to seeing
as much of Han Suyin’s prose bravely interpreted for the Cinemascope screen
yields a commendable entertainment as varied and magnificent as the
performances wrought by Jennifer Jones and William Holden.
Together they remain
the epitome of chaste, unaffected love – at least on the screen. But watch
carefully. When Jones’ Han emotes Holden’s Mark is still and vice versa, their
never-entirely aligned joys and sorrows exaggerated by the discourse of what’s not being said between them. The
conflict of the caste system is slowly tearing Mark and Suyin apart even as they
are hypnotically drawn into each other’s arms. This balancing act is really
quite remarkable; extraordinary even, because it provides the ultimate glimpse
into a pair of lovers never more allied than when they are forced apart.
Holden’s voice-over narration after Mark’s death, and presumably derived from
his letters to Suyin, who keeps hearing them over and over again in her head,
creates an emotional bridge to a lost horizon bound to no earthly destination
of time or space.
Behind the
scenes it was an entirely different story. Perhaps frustrated by her own
stagnated career and two lost opportunities helmed by her impresario husband,
David O. Selznick, Jennifer Jones was often caustic and hostile on the set and
infrequently more than displeased with her costar’s penchant for using charm to
have his way with his leading ladies. Miraculously none of this backstage
vinegar seeps into her performance; but instead creates a rarified ‘chemistry’
that has forever since translated into an intangible substance and blueprint of
what real romance is all about – or at least, thought to be.
The tragedy
for Mark and Han is, of course, that their love of many-splendored things will
not endure; its brief flourish almost immediately stifled by Mark’s wife who,
off camera emphatically refuses to grant him a divorce, and later by the
penultimate blow; Mark’s premature death while covering the Korean conflict
near the front lines. In an age where special effects and graphic make-up
applications have all but brutalized moviegoers with images of varying
grotesqueness that leave absolutely nothing to the imagination (we who have
come to expect nothing better from our movie art than the big reveal), Mark’s
death is handled with remarkable restraint, and yet simultaneously a supreme
ornamentation of cinematic storytelling; the swell of Alfred Newman’s score
suddenly slipped into a profound silence, and then the deafening noise of a
bomber descending and very brief glimpse of its torpedoes falling from the sky.
These snapshots are juxtaposed with an image of a small bowl of bright red
paint being knocked off Han’s worktable by her young charge Oh-No (Candace Lee)
onto a rather drab tan rug; its garish splatter succinctly telling us what it
will take Suyin a few more scenes to know – that her dream of their life
together is at an end.
In all Love Is A Many-Splendored Thing remains
a grand and glorious excursion into the nucleus of an impossible romance
without even a hint of sexual explicitness, apart from a few chaste kisses and
one semi-erotic clinch in the tall grasses overlooking the harbor. But these
are not meant to titillate or even reinforce the obvious, rather to
simultaneously satisfy the ticket buyers and code of screen censorship. The
satisfaction is extremely well-placed and…well…satisfying. Love Is A Many-Splendored Thing deploys its potency not with a
passionate tearing of the flesh, but a sincere embracement of the viewer’s
heart and mind; its understated grace made ripe with the tang of a bitter,
though always candid sweetness that undoubtedly and forever more was meant to
remain a very splendored thing indeed.
The same is
true of Twilight Time’s Limited Edition Blu-ray; a positively gorgeous affair
from first to last and a vast improvement on the way this film has looked on
home video. Gone is the chronic anemic palette of washed out colors. What we get
is a vibrant restored hi-def presentation that is probably very close in
keeping with the original look of Leon Shamroy’s sumptuous hues. Flesh tones
are greatly improved, though on occasion can still look a tad too orange. The
refinement in fine details is a minor revelation. Everything pops as it should;
the shimmering coral green and pumpkin seed orange silks Han Suyin wears, the
dashing tweeds and browns of Mark’s attire, the vibrant greens in vegetation.
All of it comes to life in new and unexpected ways to heighten the mood of an
already thrilling masterwork. A few shots belie the rear projection inserts and
some exhibit a slightly heavier grain structure than the rest of the movie. But
on the whole everything looks as it should.
The DTS 5.1
audio will really give your speakers a workout. Alfred Newman’s robust
underscoring is a feast, richly explored within the movie’s soundtrack, but
even more meaningfully represented as an isolated score, along with the
original audio commentary recorded for the DVD by noted historians Jon
Burlingame, Sylvia Stoddard and Michael Lonzo. Regrettably, Twilight Time’s Blu-ray
leaves the memorable A&E Biography on William Holden on the cutting room
floor: a pity because we aren’t likely to get this released anywhere else. I am
not entirely certain why Twilight Time’s discs continue to omit extras included
on Fox’s DVD’s – but I will presume it has something to do with third party
licensing. Bottom line: This Blu-ray easily bests Fox’s old DVD. Highly
recommended!
FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the best)
3.5
VIDEO/AUDIO
4
EXTRAS
2
Comments