Lady From Chungking

Lady From Chungking is an American war film directed by William Nigh in 1943. This is a black and white film by PRC pictures which is one of the two that Anna May Wong was in. Even though is was a low budget film, it was very well done and is a classic among her work. Anna May Wong was popular at the time because she was the first Chinese American movie star. She is a natural actress and her tone of voice is sincere and calming at the same time. In this film, she plays the role of Kwan Mei, who is the leader of a resistance organization in a rural village. She works at slave labor with a village of coolies under Japanese military control. The film takes place during WW2 after the Japanese invade China. The film gets interesting when two American pilots are shot down by the Japanese air force. The Chinese save one pilot, but the Japanese capture the other one and they keep him imprisoned in a hotel basement where the Japanese general in the region is staying. Kwan Mei makes plans to have them help her organization. The general, Kaimura, arrives in the village and she decides to disguise herself as an aristocrat in order to get close to him and learn what his plans are. She gets all dolled up to try and distract him. She is part of a plan to assassinate the general and mess up Japanese operations in the area. At the end of the film, she accomplishes her goal of saving the coolies and killing the general, but sacrifices her own life in doing so.

There is something in the film that I didn’t really understand and that was the reason for the presence of the blonde character. She speaks like she’s from Brooklyn but says she’s Russian. This is the character played by Mae Clarke. After realizing the time of when the film was made, I think the reason for this was because at that time every film had to have at least one blonde character even if the film took place in the middle of wartime China. Despite this, the film brought up situations that were true. There was a scene that was my favorite and it was when Anna May Wong was wearing her gorgeous Chinese gown and she acted noble against the nasty Japanese to help save the coolies as they were about to be gunned down. She didn’t want to blow her cover so she had to watch the old men be murdered and she shed tears as this happened. The film is only 68 minutes but it gets its point across quickly and painlessly.