I had high hopes re-viewing this film which I remember being entranced by as a child. Sorry to say it didn't live up to my expectations. That may be as much to my adult cynicism as anything else but even so I found the film, particularly in the second half, to be overly cloying and sentimental. I know from related reading that the real - life Nurse Gladys Aylward (still alive when the film was released) was upset by the phony insertion of a love interest between her and the army captain. I strongly believe it weakens the dynamic premise of the film - here was a woman single-mindedly devoted to missionary work amongst the people and particularly children of an obscure North Chinese province and it just detracts from her religious dedication to her cause for her to be swooning around a handsome Eurasian as played by Curt Jurgens. The earlier more episodic scenes work better for me than the sub-"Sound of Music" march of the Chinese children (to mix my Rodgers and Hammerstein metaphors) to safety. I found the hackneyed swelling and subsiding of the music at key scenes, especially during the concocted love scenes between Bergman and Jurgens, to be intrusive and detracting. The whole film should have been done in a grittier more realistic way and would thus have made for a better more cohesive movie. Ingrid Bergman is radiant and energetic in the lead part (you have to laugh when she states at one point that she's not attractive), Jurgens is leaden in a contrived stereotypical role while an aged Robert Donat is excellent and almost unrecognisable in his role as the mandarin with a heart of gold. All told, however, I found the film too sentimental reflecting more on the merits of Bergman the actress than on Aylward whose true - life story this was. And for a bio - pic that, in my book, has to be wrong.
Review of The Inn of the Sixth Happiness
