55 Days at Peking

As fims go, a good action adventure. I've been a fan of this film for many years. My great grandfather was actually part of the Boxer Rebellion as part of the US Military. Besides, you have an all star cast in Charleton Heston, Ava Gardner, and David Niven, not to mention many other famous actors of the time. The film does suffer from being overly long, and not historically accurate. The latter of course can be overlooked if this were just to facilitate the story telling. The problem is it makes the Boxer Rebellion appear to be the entire fault of the Chinese. This was by no means true. The other problem I've always had with the film was there were no Asian actors cast in the Chinese leading roles. They were portrayed by British actors made up to look Chinese. These actors while doing an admirable job, were put in bad makeup for one, and secondly slipped from Chinese to British accents throughout the film. I know the practice of using anglo centric actors insead of Asian actors was once common in cinema, but by 1960 when this film was in production, you would think the studio would have cast Asian talent. On the positive side as already stated, the film is an action vehicle for Heston, and show cases David Niven at his best. Also, being a fan of Dimitri Tiomkin, it's one of his best scores, rivaled only by his score from the Guns of Navarone. It's great escapism if nothing else, and at least places focus on a historical event, long forgotten in the wake of two world wars. Maybe it will prompt a viewer or two to look up the real story. Also, refer to Charlton Heston's published auto biographies about the acting relationship between he and Ava Garder. Interesting stuff.

I get really confused with peoples comments. Its a film, action movie, Enjoyable romp . Who cares if its right wrong whatever. if yoyu want to know what happened read a history book. I go to cinema to enjoy a movie. this i enjoyed alot. Old style big budget good action scenes..... story is different , held back in my opinion by the love story. Typical Heston character , but i like this type of film. hOWEVER all said done its better than watching a modern drab movie.... good entertainment which is why Indiana does so well..escapeism. As for the official revue... dont agree , thought it was well acted for the time, by todays standards a little wooden but NIven was great.

Imperialist, jingoist ponderous crap harking back to the glory days of Empire.