Love Is a Many Splendored Thing
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List Price: $14.98
Features
• Closed-captioned
• Color
• DVD-Video
• Letterboxed
• Widescreen
• NTSC
In Theaters : 1955
DVD Release : 07 March, 2000 |
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Love Is a Many Splendored Thing description
This love story made in 1955 and set against the backdrop of war is a many-splendored thing: it features a drop-dead gorgeous Eurasian doctor seeking meaning in her life (Jennifer Jones), a dashing but married American war correspondent who's macho yet not afraid to declare his love (William Holden), and a couple of murky subplots to give their relationship its oh-what's-going-to-happen-next edge (her Chinese heritage, his wife, the outbreak of the Korean War). One scene builds beautifully upon the next, accompanied by dialogue that often sounds like poetry: "I will make no mistakes in the name of loneliness," the doctor says near the beginning of their relationship. The movie also makes few mistakes as it combines thoughtful words with Oscar-winning costumes to tell its tale. It even leaves you with a hummable tune--the Academy Award-winning title song--as you reach for the Kleenex. --Valerie J. Nelson |
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Love Is a Many Splendored Thing Customer Reviews
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♥♥♥♥♥ |
Hong Kong Dewy
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Jennifer Jones may not have been the greatest actress of Hollywood's Golden Age, but she was absolutely solid, and could even be quite excellent when given a chance to show her comic side in fare off the beaten track like CLUNY BROWN or BEAT THE DEVIL. She spent most of her time in soapers like this one, however, where she did not necessarily redeem the material but at least always brought a likability and dignity to her work that often made her seem better than her films deserved. In this famous weeper Jones plays Dr. Han Suyin, a Hong Kong doctor and (as her character repeats again and again, as if we might forget it) a Eurasian. Searching for meaning in her life in the years after World War II, she finds ecstacy in the arms of Mark Elliot (William Holden), an American journalist. Though stigmatized by her hospital for living a white man, Dr. Han learns to surrender herself to love, and experiences rapture with Mark on the beaches and hilltops of Hong Kong (photographed here to look like a perpetual ghost city). Fortune tellers promise them a long life and many children... and then the Korean War starts, and Mark is called away to cover the combat. (Guess what happens.)
Many people have found real emotional catharsis in the film, particularly in its famous ending back on that hilltop: Jones and Holden at least add quite a lot of class to the proceedings (although they could not stand each other in real life and quarreled constantly on the set). The script offers only a few pleasurable howlers in the dialogue (Third Uncle to Han Suyin: "We shall now have tea and speak of absurdities"), but is pretty lackluster and amateurish: for whatever reason, the screenwriters require Dr. Han to identify herself on the telephone in practically every scene. Other mysteries include why Fox did not shoot the film in Cinemascope, even though the setting and theme practically beg for it, and why Jones is constantly forced to wear such dowdy and ill-fitting cheongsams. Though the blissed-out Sammy Fain theme song is much adored, it is repeated throughout to an almost maddening degree. |
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Love Is a Many Splendored Thing dvd movie.