tomsview There are layers to "The World of Suzie Wong". I find it engaging, surprisingly witty, and William Holden and Nancy Kwan have charisma to spare. However the way the film highlights how the Chinese were classed as social inferiors is wince-inducing. Especially so now that China is an emerging super power, and the fact that if you go to a hospital in my city, Sydney, your life is very likely to be saved by a Tan, a Chan or a Wong.But this film is a time capsule of the way things were. The film actually treats the Chinese rather respectfully. Even though the bar girls at the centre of the story are prostitutes, they are presented as worthwhile people and given a certain dignity although I can't imagine Elizabeth Taylor or Audrey Hepburn swapping places with Nancy Kwan when William Holden tears off her dress.As an artist, I enjoy the art aspect of the story. It's amusing watching William Holden pretending to paint Suzie in his bedroom studio. Bill is a neat painter. No dustcoat or apron for him, even though a spatter of Alizarin Crimson or Cerulean Blue would turn his trousers into painting pants immediately - I possess about 50 pairs of painting pants.But I have always admired the paintings he executes as the story unfolds. Bold, confidant works with powerful composition and superior draughtsmanship.Recently I discovered that they were done by Elizabeth Moore, a sixteen-year-old art student attending Kingston Art School in London. Sixteen! Amazing. Better known as Liz Moore, her first love was sculpture. She went on to create the Star Child for Kubrick's 2001 and then the 'nude' furniture for the Korova Milk Bar scene in "A Clockwork Orange". Finally she was involved in creating the costume for C3PO and the Stormtrooper helmets for "Star Wars".There are a couple of sites that have tributes to her and show other work including busts of The Beatles and Dame Sybil Thorndike. Another site features "The centrepiece painting from the film 'The World of Suzie Wong'", revealing thickly applied impasto. Photos of her show a vibrant blonde. Sadly that beauty and talent were crammed into too short a life. She was killed in a car crash in Holland in 1976 aged only 32.To those who know, "The World of Suzie Wong" is a legacy to that burgeoning talent and a gift that would seem to have been divinely inspired.

Nazi_Fighter_David The setting is Hong Kong in the late fifties… The film tells the story of a bittersweet love affair between an American architect who has decided to try painting and a wonderful Asian girl who uses with vigor and diligence her essentially dirty trade in a turmoil of mischievous fantasy… Suzie Wong (Nancy Kwan), attracted to Robert Lomax (Holden), offers to be his "steady girlfriend," but a world-weary Lomax informs her that he has had enough of love and wants only to paint… Paint he does, and the irresistible hooker, appointed as a model, appears in his work in a variety of poses… A compassionate Lomax suddenly realizes he loves her and takes her as his mistress… There are comic moments in Richard Quine's movie concerning the lies Suzie relates to win the respect of her prostitute friends and her drunken admirer, Ben (Michael Wilding). Nancy Kwan in her film's debut displays a large range of feelings, alternating hardness, affection, and affinity

rhoda-1 Though William Holden's age is part of what makes him awkward as the lead, another obstacle is his being American, as the hero ought to be English. The novel was written by an Englishman, and all the Westerners we meet in the movie, as Hong Kong was then a British protectorate, are English. Along with not being young and sexually timid or naive (the better to contrast with Suzy), Holden, a big, virile-looking man, does not share the washed-out-looking sexual primness of the English, and therefore seems almost as much an outsider among them as does Suzy. He does not have the cautious, deferential manner of the Englishmen, who, we are told, often have Chinese mistresses--not surprising at a time when good women were not supposed to enjoy sex, even after marriage. Michael Wilding, as the pathetic English businessman, says he was "grateful" when his wife allowed him to make love to her for the first time in a year.In viewing The World of Suzy Wong, one must keep in mind that it was made at a time when the ethos of the wife was different from that of the prostitute only in that she would limit herself to one man. Both types of women, in return for money, gave not only sex but submission and obedience. Suzy's belief that a man who really loves his woman will beat her is treated as comic, but at the time the picture was made this was indeed the belief of many women, and not just in the Orient. And while many other women might not have equated male violence with passion, they tolerated it as part of the price they had to pay for financial security. Despite the stricter morals of the time, it might actually have been easier for a man to see a prostitute as a potential wife than it would be today, when she would not be looked down upon for her sexual promiscuity (which could be fixed with a proposal) but for her low earnings and poor career plan.

duane-44 I read some of the comments with dismay. This is an amazing movie in many respects. It is not meant to be steamy. The point is to show the straightforward and powerful interplay and juxtaposition of love, morality, situational ethics and plain old-fashioned fate and tragedy.There are amazing characters in this movie, acting that is rarely equaled by today's performers.An innocence of story and character and setting is captured here that is worthy of the label "Classic." Holden is only "strolling" through this roll because it is that kind of roll. He is that kind of actor. Jimmy Stewart with a bit more grit.Nancy Kwan is inspired and a truly lovely and under appreciated classic beauty.Her performance brings across a range of emotion that is rarely seen- perhaps lately in some of the more popular Chinese and Indian Films.Iif this movie doesn't touch your heart and stir your mind to question its priorities, then you may not have one!