June 18 movie: China Doll. Victor Mature plays an American GI stationed in China who falls in love with a Chinese woman (Li Li Hua). The plot is repulsive -- Mature accidently buys her as an indentured servant for three months, then he's totally mean to her, until her abject servility and supreme housekeeping skills gradually win him over -- yet somehow the movie manages to be charming. Until it becomes completely tragic. It's a major tearjerker. Most notable for the fact that the rest of the soldiers and nurses don't object to the romance. Well actually they do object, but not because of race: they think Mature is taking advantage of her.
The cast also includes an incredibly annoying smart-aleck Chinese boy who hangs around the base and translates for Li Li Hua. It's kind of interesting the way they handle the language issue: when American characters are around, the woman and the boy speak to each other in Chinese without subtitles; when they're alone they speak English and we're to assume it's really Chinese. It's extremely confusing in one scene where the boy is teaching the woman a few words of English to say to Mature, but the whole conversation is in English. I was also amused that the boy clearly did not speak Chinese & had been taught a few words for the movie. (It's been 20 years and my Chinese is about as bad as his, but I'm not trying to pass myself off as Chinese in a movie!) She would speak to him in fluent, perfect Mandarin and he would respond with halting phrases in a terrible accent.
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