The High White Note Blowing Out To The China Seas-The Film Adaptation Of Pearl S. Buck’s “China Sky” (1945)- A Review

The High White Note Blowing Out To The China Seas-The Film Adaptation Of Pearl S. Buck’s “China Sky” (1945)- A Review 

DVD Review

By Josie Davis

China Sky, starring Randolph Scott, Ruth Warrick, Ellen Drew, Anthony Quinn, 1945

Although I am fairly new to the film reviewing business, to journalism in general having just finished up my graduate program at Boston University’s School of Communications I find it hard to believe what the older writers keep telling me as words of advice.  To watch my back, to watch out for fellow reviewers who will skewer my work just to get ahead, just to beat someone in what they have all called a cutthroat, drag down business. The idea behind their cautions seems to center on the notion that nobody really needs to read a film review, everybody has a subjective point of view on the subject matter of a film and the only way to get out from under the rock is to take dead aim at somebody else’s work in order to do what they call “move up the food chain.”

Here is what is ironic about all of what they say. I was assigned this old- time film, China Sky, by the site manager mostly because nobody else wanted to do the review and because if I messed up, the site manager’s words, nobody would notice some raw rookie errors anyway. After viewing the film I was puzzled, could not figure out how to write the review up since the film seemed very dated and weird. Weird since the film, as the title indicated, was about and set in China during World War II, during the time Japan was trying to make all of Asia its feeding grounds. Yet several of the main actors like Anthony Quinn known to me from a cinema class where we watched and critiqued Zorba the Greek who were obviously not Chinese were made up to look that way rather than have real Chinese actors in the roles.

One day at the water cooler I introduced myself to some older writers who were talking about the modern film Black Panther and when I had an opportunity I asked what I should do about the odd film I had been given to review. Most of them, actually all of them except Si Lannon, walked away after basically telling that it was my problem and that if I wanted to get ahead in the profession I had better figure out a way to deal with the film or they would be more than willing to rip it apart to show me how tough this “racket” really was. Si told me not to listen to them because that was all an act. They just didn’t want to be bothered “mentoring” a rookie on a turkey like China Sky. Si gave me some advice which I think is reflected in this review-if all else fails then use the old “slice of life” fall back. By that he meant if I couldn’t figure a “hook” is what he, they call it to just go on and on about the plotline of the film and move on. Thanks, Si who is proof that whatever else some people in this business are not out to cut everybody else’s throat.         

I remember, because I asked my mother, that my grandmother used to have many of Pearl S. Buck’s books on her shelf. I might have glanced through a couple, I remember one The Good Earth I started to read but gave it up because it was hard to follow when I was a teenager, didn’t speak to me about the China I had heard about. I believe that most of Buck’s books were based on China experiences and represented a Western missionary come to help the heathens to the good life way of looking at that then benighted country. China Sky falls into that same category. I have already mentioned the use of Western actors in some roles as Chinese but also that the Chinese people are portrayed as mere props for the in this case Americans to bring into the modern world.  

Si told me to get the “boy meets girl” part out of the way first. I already knew from the tons of films that I had seen in classes and on my own that an extraordinary number of films, especially from Hollywood back in the 1930s and 1940s depended on that theme. Here that theme got a serious work- out in the relationship between the two doctors, one male, Thompson, played by ruggedly handsome Randolph Scott and one female, Durant, played by quietly beautiful Ruth Warrick. From scene one, where he is absent off in America to raise money for medical equipment everybody and their sister and brother knows she loves him. But that love is thwarted first by their professional relationship and secondly when the good doctor does appear he has a brand- new wife, Laura, played by fetching Ellen Drew. Done for. No, through the course of the film as Laura cannot adjust to the wartime deprivations and misery Doc Thompson starts to see the light, starts to see that he had made a mistake and should have taken his fellow doctor will all hands. But brave Doc Durant will just pine away and be the good soldier.

Of course in the end Laura will fall down and the two fated doctors will come together. There is also a secondary love interest between the Chinese guerilla leader, played by Anthony Quinn in Chinese make-up and one of the nurses, also in Chinese make-up, which will also get happily resolved when the treacherous native doctor she is betrothed to is killed after betraying the hospital and town to a “wily” Japanese POW. 

As already foreshadowed this film is a wartime romance set in World War II China when the Japanese were fighting for control of the whole vast country and the town where all the action takes place is near where the Chinese partisans have their supply dumps. Since the Japanese are trying to push through holding that position is a must for them. That however means that the town took a terrible beating from the Japanese air forces bombing the hell out of everything that moved-including the American-sponsored hospital. The wartime action spins around that senior Japanese POW who the guerrillas want to put on trial for war crimes. He, as an officer, tried every way to get information back to his side about the location of the supply dumps. Including playing on the racial and romantic animosities of the chief native doctor (who was actually Korean and whose unknown father was Japanese). Naturally the good guys led by Doc Thompson and the guerrilla chief beat back the bastardly Japanese. You already know the love story part where Doc Thompson’s desperate to leave wife acted as a foil for treachery with the Korean doctor in order to get her and Doc out of the country so that part is done.

Final note, footnote, for the “slice of life” idea from Si. We live in an age more concerned about what we call political correctness than back in the 1940s so some of the stereotypes are pretty raw. The superiority of Americans over mainly prop Asians. The contempt for the average people expressed by Laura. The wily treacherous Japanese and the sullen Korean. But above all that use of Western actors in Chinese make-up reminiscent of whites in blackface tells me that this film is certainly a period piece. That is that for a first review. Hope I survive.