Huievest Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

Sharkflei Your blood may run cold, but you now find yourself pinioned to the story.

Matylda Swan It is a whirlwind of delight --- attractive actors, stunning couture, spectacular sets and outrageous parties.

Anoushka Slater While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

JohnHowardReid Copyright 3 December 1942 by 20th Century-Fox Film Corp. New York opening at the Roxy: 20 January 1943. U.S. release: 9 December 1942. Australian release: 18 November 1943. 8,736 feet. 97 minutes.OPENING SYNOPSIS: Johnny Williams (George Montgomery), an American newsreel photographer captured by the Japs in China, makes a breath-taking escape with the aid of a tough soldier-of-fortune, Major Weed (Victor McLaglen), and the Major's girl-friend, Captain Fifi (Lynn Bari).NOTES: Domestic rentals gross: $1.4 million. Although this wasn't sufficient to put the movie into the topmost branches of the box-office tree, it's a most respectable total - more money in fact that either Ninotchka or Grapes of Wrath or even The Women took on original release in the U.S./Canada. PRINCIPAL MIRACLE: Hathaway, Hecht and company turn wartime propaganda into first-rate entertainment.COMMENT: Even by Hathaway's highly polished standard, this is a stylishly fascinating entry in the wartime propaganda mill. The camerawork and the lighting are absolutely out of this world. We can't imagine why the movie wasn't nominated for any of the year's major awards. The sets are really magnificent too. In fact, I'll go further. I'd say that the sets would rank amongst the finest (the most artistic, the most imaginative, the most eye-catching, the most aesthetically appealing) ever created for a motion picture. But no awards. Not even a nomination. True, there's one thing - and only one thing - about China Girl that's not top-flight, and that's Ben Hecht's cornball script, with its stereotyped characterization and strictly conventional brash-American-boy-meets-beautiful-but-elusive-Eurasian-girl romance. All the same, Miss Tierney is suitably beautiful as the heroine and Mr Montgomery routinely brash as the diamond-in-the-rough hero. The supporting cast, however, is even more interesting, with some fine studies in villainy from Bari, McLaglen, Rumann and Baxter.OTHER VIEWS: Superbly photographed, well played, with great art direction (the hotel set is most ingenious and imaginative), stylish direction, snappy dialogue, and a good music score (abetted by that great 20th Century-Fox sound track), this film lacks only one thing - a satisfactory conclusion. SPOILERS: This must be one of the few Hollywood films in which justice does not triumph. Although this is certainly a novel idea, the conclusion doesn't even cash in on this novelty because it's blatant propaganda swamps any other ideas out of an audience's mind. Great supporting cast. Pace is A-1 too, and the plot moves like a crackerjack until about halfway through. It's Gene Tierney who slows down the action; but she's so beautifully lit and costumed, we don't really care. - JHR writing as George Addison.

dmuel As in most films produced during the war years, at least those that focused on Asian locales, China Girl probably had two important functions when it was made. The first, of course, was to entertain audiences with action and romance, to be profitable, the second was to serve the US war effort though, sadly, there was never much of a US effort made to actually help China until late in the war. In this film George Montgomery--described by some critics as the actor chosen after Montgomery Cliff or Tyrone Power refused the role-- plays a rakish hustler out to profit from the chaos of war. After escaping Japanese controlled China, he lands in Burma where he meets his China Girl, played by Gene Tierney who looks not a bit like a Chinese woman. While there is some attempt to inject other elements to the plot, Japanese agents and even a "love triangle", these seem superficially installed for their melodrama and don't do much to draw the viewer into the story. A major part of the plot is that true love can absolve moral failings. How sweet! There are logistical and factual problems with the story-line: the hero says he has just fled a Japanese military base in Luchow, located in Sichuan, where the Japanese army never advanced to; a World War I vintage biplane carries its passengers several hundred miles over mountainous terrain, surely well beyond such a plane's range; a dispute over destinations has the hero arguing that they will go to Kunming, not Yunnan (Kunming is in the center of Yunnan); the hero and his gal take an evening stroll to the Dhammayan Temple vicinity, about a hundred miles from Mandalay, where they are supposed to be. But one would not expect Hollywood scriptwriters to be familiar with Asian geography,and viewers of that era even less so.All in all, a mediocre effort to depict a trans-continental romance set against the background of horrendous human tragedy in WW II China. There were some good films made during this period, but this is not one of them.

jbacks3 Henry Hathaway starts this seldom-seen WW2 drama off with some of the most effectively brutal executions seen in a wartime movie. Then there's the scene where hero George Montgomery and Victor McLaglen crawl through a ditch of dead Chinese. As if 1942 audiences didn't hate the Japanese enough in the year since Pearl Harbor... The problem with China Girl is the Ben Hecht (I can't believe it's possible to complain about Hecht) script (based on an idea prodded out of the prolific ghost-pen of Darryl F. Zanuck). Montgomery plays a faux-Clark Gable-ish newsreel cameraman suspected of being a spy, who in the midst of his escape snatches some intelligence seemingly vital to the Japanese. Now unfortunately, you can forget all that. It becomes a love story as Montgomery woos exotic (but not very Chinese looking) Gene Tierney. Except that McLaglen and his confederate moll (Lynn Bari, who also has the hots for George) have their own agenda. Except you can forget all about that too. The plot goes nowhere and serves as an excuse to show further Japanese atrocities against Chinese children. No spoilers here... it's just that the movie feels pointless plot-wise. Tierney was the hottest actress at 20th Century Fox from '41-44... her acting ability was respectably serviceable (best when playing a cold bitch from hell) but few ever melted a camera the way she did. I was astonished how Montgomery moved around on credit--- I think he still owed stereotypical-yet-now un-P.C. Bobby Blake at least $450 (in reality the kid probably would have cut him). The best part of China Girl is the set design, the worst part is how it manipulates the audience. Where'd the plot go?

Jay Burton I'm a big Gene Tierney fan, so I tuned into this one with some eagerness, hoping to see a film that captured pre-WWII tensions in SE Asia and gave the luscious actress some room to shine. And while Gene does have a few moments of brilliance, the rest of the film is a mish-mash of good and bad elements. The whole is somewhat less than satisfying.My biggest problem is that this film doesn't really know what it wants to be: action movie, spy/war thriller, romance, drama, or anti-Japanese war propaganda. The script tries to be all things to all people and ends up satisfying no one. Plot elements are left hanging unresolved. One line of tough guy dialog is followed by another trying to stir hearts about the plight of the Chinese nationalists. What a mess! George Montgomery is a poor man's Clark Gable, and he's almost a caricature in this film - tough guy only looking out for himself who falls hard for a "dame" caught up in the mess that was China and Burma in 1941. Though Tierney gets top billing, it's really Montgomery's film, and he's not up to carrying it. He's pretty good at the action stuff, but he's lost in the romantic scenes. Plus, his comedic timing is way off. It doesn't help him that the screenwriter gave him some terribly cheesy dialog.There is little depth to any of the supporting cast, although Robert Blake gives a scene-stealing performance as a young Burmese kid (of all things) that pals around with our hero in Mandalay.There are some good elements here - some exotic shots that appear to be on location (if they're backlot, they fooled me), and a wonderful set in the hotel in Mandalay. The action scenes often move well. The movie doesn't pull punches, either - we see Chinese civilians being mowed down by Japanese machine guns, and our hero crawls across a ditch of dead bodies in an early escape scene. This is more grim than I expected from a film more than 60 years old, and it's effectively done.But overall, I can't recommend this film to hardly anyone. There are better films about Japanese brutality in SE Asia during WWII ("Bridge on the River Kwai" or "Objective, Burma") and certainly better films for Tierney fans (my recs - "Laura", "The Ghost and Mrs. Muir", and "Leave Her to Heaven"). Give this one a pass and consign it to the history books.