How Hollywood’s 55 Days at Peking turned China’s Boxer rebellion into a racist Western

This is the latest instalment in a feature series reflecting on instances of East meets West in world cinema, including China-US co-productions. Hoping to replicate the success of his 1961 smash hit El Cid, Hollywood producer Samuel Bronston turned to the events of the Boxer rebellion, which took place in China from 1899 to 1901. Named after a crucial siege, the ensuing epic, 55 Days at Peking (1963), would star Charlton Heston and David Niven, and be shot on huge sets in rural Spain. Bronston told the Los Angeles Times he was attracted to the story because it showed “the unity of peoples, no matter what their beliefs, in the face of danger”. Those people? Mostly white. The face of danger? Chinese. As the Boxer rebellion threatens to engulf China, the Eight-Nation Alliance’s outnumbered forces try to hold the capital, then known as Peking. With Heston’s Major Matt Lewis representing tough-talking American militarism, and Niven’s Sir Arthur Robertson the picture of urbane UK diplomacy, you can imagine similar tussles taking place today over the Iran war. The production was a troubled one, cycling through five scriptwriters and three directors. Original director Nicholas Ray (Rebel Without a Cause, King of Kings) had a heart attack mid-shoot – and no wonder. As he recalled to Take One magazine: “The pressure was tremendous. On a US$6 million production, I had no production manager, and a 21-year-old assistant director. No script. I had two artists in my office, one Chinese and one Spanish. I’d describe the scene to them, they’d draw it and then I’d give it to the so-called writers and say, ‘Write a scene around this?’” The actors were not impressed. Heston called his character’s tepid romance with Ava Gardner’s Russian aristocrat “very arbitrary”, Gardner spent the shoot drinking heavily, and Niven walked off set four weeks into filming, staying away until a hastily scribbled monologue persuaded him back. As second unit director and Ray’s second replacement, Andrew Marton noted: “What I have learned from this, I hope permanently, is never start a film without a good, finished script.” The screenplay is certainly one of the weaker aspects, trying to keep too many plates spinning at once. But modern viewers will struggle to get past the casting of white actors in “yellowface” as Chinese characters. For those who can, the film is not without merit. It certainly looks and sounds the part. Dimitri Tiomkin’s stirring score and theme song were nominated for Academy Awards, while the opening and closing credits feature evocative paintings by Chinese-American watercolourist Dong Kingman. Recreated on a 70-acre (28-hectare) site by production designers Veniero Colasanti and John Moore, Peking’s Legation Quarter and Forbidden City look huge and forbidding, with walls that are 40ft (12 metres) high and a canal running through the set. Three thousand extras were required to fill it, including 1,500 Chinese performers drawn from across Europe because there were nowhere near enough in Spain alone. The combat scenes are of a scale that is hard to imagine today, with hundreds of torch-wielding Boxers storming the battlements as the alliance tries to hold the city. Director of photography Jack Hildyard’s shots of the sun rising over the walls are breathtaking, although clearly filmed in Spain, not China. But is there any getting over the racism? Although “yellowface” was still standard practice in Hollywood at the time, there was no need for it to be – Flower Drum Song (1961) had featured a majority Asian-American cast – and most of 55 Days at Peking’s supporting (read: servile) characters are played by Asian actors who could easily have been used in major roles. Particularly regrettable is the evil Prince Tuan (played by the Australian Robert Helpmann), a glowering Fu Manchu-like baddy who twirls his ornate nail guards as he plots against the Empress Dowager Cixi (English actress Flora Robson). It is a pity, because the film does have some small sense of its responsibilities. There is a decent amount of Mandarin spoken; the Japanese contribution to the siege is acknowledged through the dignified Colonel Goro Shiba (future Tampopo director Juzo Itami); and Major Lewis tells his marines, “We’re almost in Peking, capital city of China, this is an ancient and highly cultured civilisation.” This sensitivity, if you can call it that, does not last. Robertson warns Lewis that China is not the Wild West, saying: “We can’t go around shooting Chinese like Red Indians.” But the film does come to resemble a Western – an Orientalist Alamo where every Chinese death is for the greater good, and every alliance loss a tragedy. Never do we get the sense of who the Boxers were, or why their cause might have legitimacy. Essentially, 55 Days at Peking seems to be saying that China is a colonial outpost to be squabbled over by white people. Or, as the empress puts it: “China is a prostrate cow; the powers are not content milking her, but must also butcher her.” The fact that this line is delivered by a performer in “yellowface” is an indignity too far. Want more articles like this? Follow SCMP Film on Facebook

How Hollywood’s 55 Days at Peking turned China’s Boxer rebellion into a racist Western

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}55 Days at Peking (1963) paints the historical event as an Orientalist Alamo, while white actors ‘yellowface’ as the main Chinese characters

55 Days at Peking (1963) paints the historical event as an Orientalist Alamo, while white actors ‘yellowface’ as the main Chinese characters