I just finished watching this for the first time and I just have to comment on it. I've been quite pleased with Samuel Bronston's mega-productions before. "El Cid" was cheesy but wonderful; "King of Kings" was an excellent dramatization of an overdone story. "55 Days at Peking" has so many highlights. Charlton Heston gives the performance of a lifetime-- it's seriously almost as good as his "Ben-Hur" and "Planet of the Apes" work. David Niven is also very good, and Ava Gardner is wonderful simply because she plays a Russian character without choking on a thick Russian accent. Dimitri Tiomkin also does some career-topping composing and conducting here. Bronston, as usual, threw a lot of money into the mix, but you can see every single penny and it pays off tremendously. The explosive battle sequences are much more effective than anything Michael Bay could crank out, and it's always so satisfying to know that every single person in every single frame is a living, breathing human. And actors like Flora Robson and Leo Genn play their Chinese characters with the awkward touch of "The Good Earth," but they do manage to eschew caricature and (mostly) stereotype. Someone ought to release this in America as a valid DVD.
Review of 55 Days at Peking
