Truly Dreadful Film

It is not only a funny movie, but it allows a great amount of joy for anyone who watches it.

A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

There are layers to "The World of Suzie Wong". I find it engaging, surprisingly witty, and William Holden and Nancy Kwan have charisma to spare. However the way the film highlights how the Chinese were classed as social inferiors is wince-inducing. Especially so now that China is an emerging super power, and the fact that if you go to a hospital in my city, Sydney, your life is very likely to be saved by a Tan, a Chan or a Wong.But this film is a time capsule of the way things were. The film actually treats the Chinese rather respectfully. Even though the bar girls at the centre of the story are prostitutes, they are presented as worthwhile people and given a certain dignity although I can't imagine Elizabeth Taylor or Audrey Hepburn swapping places with Nancy Kwan when William Holden tears off her dress.As an artist, I enjoy the art aspect of the story. It's amusing watching William Holden pretending to paint Suzie in his bedroom studio. Bill is a neat painter. No dustcoat or apron for him, even though a spatter of Alizarin Crimson or Cerulean Blue would turn his trousers into painting pants immediately - I possess about 50 pairs of painting pants.But I have always admired the paintings he executes as the story unfolds. Bold, confidant works with powerful composition and superior draughtsmanship.Recently I discovered that they were done by Elizabeth Moore, a sixteen-year-old art student attending Kingston Art School in London. Sixteen! Amazing. Better known as Liz Moore, her first love was sculpture. She went on to create the Star Child for Kubrick's 2001 and then the 'nude' furniture for the Korova Milk Bar scene in "A Clockwork Orange". Finally she was involved in creating the costume for C3PO and the Stormtrooper helmets for "Star Wars".There are a couple of sites that have tributes to her and show other work including busts of The Beatles and Dame Sybil Thorndike. Another site features "The centrepiece painting from the film 'The World of Suzie Wong'", revealing thickly applied impasto. Photos of her show a vibrant blonde. Sadly that beauty and talent were crammed into too short a life. She was killed in a car crash in Holland in 1976 aged only 32.To those who know, "The World of Suzie Wong" is a legacy to that burgeoning talent and a gift that would seem to have been divinely inspired.

The World of Suzie Wong is a tragic insight into colonization from the west in any form. The film does not capture this, but wants us to feel relaxed about Asians who talk cool, and dress in the same manner.With this established the union of Suzie and Holden is racially OK. ( See Sayonara with Brando and see how that film shocks the senisbilities of viewers even today.As it should.) William Holden is alright here but he is a great talent and he cannot get over the terrible direction and the watered-down play as screenplay. There's no characterization and he moves on to better things in his career, Paris When It Sizzles, is not one of his good moves, with the same bad director of Suzie Wong. Wong ans Paris are perhaps the nadir for Holden, but he does make it to Network.Nancy Kwan is light years behind France Nuyen who essayed the part on Broadway. Ms. Kwan has no acting skills that would even begin to unfurl this complicated character for us.The film could be remade..it should be, with the uncut play as a basis for it.

I enjoyed the movie because I accepted it for what it was -- a love story between two PARTICULAR people. I did NOT see it as an allegory about East meets West, imperialism or feminism. To me it wasn't a documentary about interracial love. Thus, the title ("The World of Suzie Wong") is somewhat misleading. It isn't so much about the the world or Hong Kong, but about two individual people.The Holden character was unique -- someone pushing 40, conventionally moral, unsure what would become of him professionally and geographically, suffered some bad romances in the past, couldn't afford to "keep" Suzie, and --though attracted to her-- couldn't bear the thought of her having to consort with other clients. Suzie had no other foreseeable job opportunities commensurate with what she could earn from prostitution. She created a fantasy personality/situation in her mind to deflect the grimness of her profession. As mentioned in the film, she was presented as particularly strikingly beautiful; for one thing, she was hailed as the prettiest girl in her hangout. For me they only had to prove things for themselves, not for the sociological things mentioned in the first paragraph.I generally liked the movie -- quite a few interesting scenes scattered amongst the tedious parts.Best part for me -- I loved that scene, near the end, with the burning of the paper models for a departed character, cried. At the very end of the scene, Holden asks her to whom he should address the "letter of introduction," which also was to be burned. She replies, "to whom it may concern." Wonderful. Worth staying through the whole movie.

When William Holden and Jennifer Jones scored well in Love Is A Many Splendored Thing about an interracial romance set in Hong Kong on a loan out to 20th Century Fox, the folks at Holden's home studio at Paramount figured that the long running Broadway play, The World of Suzie Wong was a natural for Bill. They bought the property and took a one scene play in the cheap Hong Kong hotel room into big production. So big it kind of dwarfs the tender love story.But the worst part of Suzie Wong is that Bill Holden is so terribly miscast. The then 43 year old Holden is playing a part that on Broadway was done by William Shatner then age 28. The part of the architect who wants to become an artist and goes to Hong Kong to discover his talent would have been better for someone like Paul Newman or Marlon Brando or even Montgomery Clift.However newcomer Nancy Kwan who is from Hong Kong scored well in the title character that France Nuyen did on Broadway. Back in the day Kwan and Nuyen seemed to do just about every young beautiful oriental woman role that came to the screen. Also well cast was Sylvia Sims who's carrying a torch for Holden as the banker's daughter trying to help him in art circles and Michael Wilding the two timing cad who enjoys Kwan's favors as a prostitute and would like to make the arrangement semi-permanent.Love Is A Many Splendored Thing made a lot more sense because Holden was romancing a professional woman his own age in Jennifer Jones. He comes off more a like a dirty old man in this film.Jen and Bill have their high windy hill in that other film and in The World of Suzie Wong there's another hill where Suzie lives part time and which sustains a mudslide after the monsoon. Let's just say it's not something to write a romantic hit song about.The World of Suzie Wong does have some nice location photography of Cold War Hong Kong. The plot has some similarities to Some Came Running, but it isn't half as good.Come to think of it, I thought Frank Sinatra was miscast as the lead in that film as well.