Gladys Aylward Inn Of The Sixth Happiness – One only has to look at any American film made in the last decade or two to realize that the aim and purpose of cinematic storytelling has undergone a seismic shift away from its more classical roots, and perhaps not for the better. The films, especially those made between the 1930s and the late 1960s, centered on a single faith; to draw the audience into their fantasy worlds of escapism. Some more modern critics have since called these byproducts of Hollywood’s golden age both myopic and ethnocentric. Like all liberalized criticism attributed to more strictly conservative art, primarily conceived from the perspective of white Central Europeans, this postscript is not made from an astutely educated, relevant, or even accurate perspective; merely intended to distort and misinterpret the purpose of the art itself, in order to strengthen the antiquated crust of prejudice against it. At that time, films not only satisfied our shared dreams, but also served as templates and reflections on our own aspirations and inner desire to make sense of both the past and the present. As viewers, we viewed the fantasy with suspended disbelief.
Films from the 1950s onwards became increasingly lavish and exotic adventures, partly to cater to the influx of servicemen who had returned from World War II and knew something about the world away from home, but also to offset the threat of television, proving its movie audiences were bigger and better than ever. Yet here was a world not to be found in nature; filled with high principles, made not only digestible, but strange and palpably entertaining: rich in its emotional content, social relevance and undeniably – and more easily – an undivided romantic view of life, both at home and abroad. Then as now, movies remain portholes, promising to step into the “other” world beyond our own fences. However, unlike today’s cinematic environment, ominously devoted to people behaving badly, the landscape back then was populated by examples of human aspirations for the better. In retrospect, it seems simplistic to assume that all the films made at the time were invested in a joie de vivre that is completely absent from our modern film culture. Still, there’s little to dispute their enveloping presence when projected onto wide, curved screens. Movies used to stir our emotions in unexpected ways. They captured our hearts as well as our imaginations and were a solace dedicated to cultural enrichment and designed, seemingly without effort, to entertain.
Gladys Aylward Inn Of The Sixth Happiness
What we experience in cinemas today is increasingly an abomination of that past: films designed to jolt audiences out of their apocalyptic and dysfunctional dystopias. We can no longer interact with the characters on the screen. They speak in the form of a clumsy pontification of selfish truths, where actions – often with a loaded weapon aimed – speak infinitely louder than words; our “protagonists” rarely interact with other characters in meaningful ways. And their reaction to even the mildest situations is also unfamiliar to the audience. The image of the hand that appears on the screen captivates with an arrogant cacophony accompanied by stunning chaos. We are overwhelmed and anesthetized by this artistic vacuum into a kind of disturbingly complete detachment. At a time when movies could be relied upon to fill any void in our lives, we now find these windows into other worlds not so much for an experience meant to ignite the imagination, but rather as recreated facsimiles of an alternate reality in which none of we would like to live. What remains to be digested is bloodless and disturbing; a series of perhaps evocative visuals (most of them rendered on a computer), surprisingly remote and antiseptic and not at all representative of life as we know it or would like it to be.
The Inn Of The Sixth Happiness, Athene Seyler (center), Ingrid Bergman (right), Curd Jurgens (back), 1958. ©20th Century Fox Stock Photo
This gestalt in filmmaking was the greatest tragedy to befall the American moviegoing experience in nearly twenty years; a complete implosion of the medium’s ability to provide a tangible interaction between the character on the screen and the people sitting in the dark – now perhaps “left” in the dark. As it stands, movies have become nothing more than a ‘silent show’. They don’t manipulate effectively or elicit an emotional response, and today’s directors show no genuine interest in eliciting such a response. Part of the problem is characterization and the lack of real stars to fuel the filmmaking machine; writers and actors” are unable to achieve what today is laughingly despised and hated “artistry”. Movies have left the glamor behind – well. Should they equally resent and disbelieve us in any iota of presentational value considered for its cultural value, inundating and engulfing us in their pantheons of chaos? Today’s films have forgotten, or rather, lost sight of a fundamental truth in the director’s canon: that often the most extraordinary among us is not the one who possesses incredible wealth or amazing physical strength; not even a sage who praises vast treasures of sacred knowledge above the rest; but rather someone who has an intuitive desire to succeed regardless of the odds. Unconditional commitment to the dream – and the positive impact it could have on the rest of the world – were important ingredients that went into the making of great American films of the past – especially those made in the 1950s. More precisely, these are the threads woven into Mark Robeson’s tapestry The Inn of the Sixth Happiness (1958).
Gladys Aylward was an extraordinary woman; a young old girl with no particular upbringing, whose burning desire to become a missionary and do God’s work became so determined in every fiber of her being, she managed to defy not only the classicism of the British caste system, but also defy the official institutions that should have accepted her sacrifice as a true believer of the faith; and this at a time when women readily refused to enjoy the advantages accorded their male counterparts. Isabel Lennart’s screenplay admirably condenses Aylward’s equally remarkable journey into manageable entertainment; a rare gift of narrative brevity that is completely lacking in most screenwriters today. Her efforts are based on Alan Burgess’s biography Little Woman; a rather idyllic account of Aylward’s harrowing journey from Britain through Russia to war-torn China.
The 158-minute Inn of the Sixth Happiness sanitizes the many extreme hardships Aylward endured during her eighteen years as a Chinese missionary (initially rejected by locals who spat on her as a “foreign devil”; brutally beaten, tortured and starved by the advancing Red Army, sick and ravaged by various viral infections contracted in these extremely poor and unsanitary conditions, and eventually suffering from the onset of dementia that overtook her predecessor, Ginny Lawson) is entirely in keeping with Hollywood’s then high-minded approach to telling biographical stories, very loosely based on real events. In fact, Lennart’s script goes into so much detail about Gladys Aylward’s life, capturing the essence of her unique and indomitable spirit, that we can almost forgive the artistic license taken along the way.
Lest we forget this is the Hollywood version of the truth; made glossy and fragrant with sumptuous designs by John Box and Geoffrey Drake, exquisite lensing by veteran cinematographer Freddie Young, which transforms the verdant rolling hills of England and Wales into a magnificent backdrop, effectively imitating Manchuria and rural China. Originally, it was planned to shoot “Tavern of the Sixth Happiness” partly in China. However, when negotiations between 2oth Century-Fox producer Buddy Adler and the Chinese government repeatedly stalled, the executive decision was made to shoot the entire film in the British Isles. To a large extent, this movie magic trick achieves its believability despite the obvious differences in vegetation and climate. In fact, I defy the common man to pick a moment when The Sixth Happiness Tavern lacks authenticity. Difficulties with Cinemascope lenses and film strips aside, The Sixth Inn hatched relatively smoothly, aided immeasurably by the presence of one of the screen’s most unassuming treasures: Ingrid Bergman. Bergman, whose American career stalled after a highly publicized — and rather infamous — affair with Italian director Roberto Rossellini, was persona non grata in America until her triumphant return in Fox’s Anastasia (1956). Bergman has been unapologetic about her indiscretions abroad, besieged by reporters to explain herself and choosing to acknowledge her failed marriage to Rossellini as “just one of those things”. The stunning success of Anastasia gave Fox the courage to offer its star an exclusive opportunity; a five-picture contract for about a million dollars per film. Despite her own financial difficulties (she was practically penniless), Bergman refused this considerable generosity, encouraging Buddy Adler to come to her with a single photograph; the property she could choose for herself did not hang over the head of an iron contract. Adler made a very wise choice in offering Bergman The Tavern of the Sixth Happiness; providing his star a kind of wayward but
Yellowface Film Review #7: The Inn Of The Sixth Happiness
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