Blast from the Past: Revisiting Jimmy Stewart’s Career
A minor film in James Stewart’s otherwise rich repertoire, The Mountain Road, is functionally directed by Daniel Mann.
Grade: C+
The tale, set in China in 1944, is based on journalist-historian Theodore H. White’s 1958 novel.
The film follows the attempts of a U.S. Army major to destroy bridges and roads that might be useful to the Japanese during World War II.
White’s coverage of China for Time magazine during the war led to an interview with former OSS Major Frank Gleason Jr., who served as head of a demolition crew that inspired the story.
A rather somber, rather dull, treatment of WWII and the Second Sino-Japanese War, this movie includes themes that were taboo for Hollywood at the time, such as the tensions between the allies and racism among American troops.
As a combat veteran, Stewart had vowed never to make a war film, due to their lack of realism, and The Mountain Road was the only war movie in which he starred as a combatant.
In 1944, Major Baldwin of the US Army Corps of Engineers is ordered to blow up an airfield. The headquarters in Kunming rely on his pre-war engineering expertise to delay the advancing Japanese forces.
Baldwin blows up a bridge and uses deceit to push a civilian truck over a cliff, trying to reach the munitions dump before the Japanese.
Although recognizing that his retribution was too brutal, Baldwin is praised for fulfilling his mission, upon sending his report to headquarters.
Although the Japanese invaders were the antagonists, they never appear in the story. The Mountain Road diverges from the ntypical World War II action films by delving into the cultural misunderstanding and racial prejudice between American soldiers and their Chinese allies.
Cast
James Stewart as Major Baldwin
Lisa Lu as Madame Su-Mei Hung (film debut)
Glenn Corbett as Collins
Harry Morgan as Sergeant Michaelson
Mike Kellin as Prince
Rudy Bond as Miller
Eddie Firestone as Lewis
Frank Silvera as Colonel Kwan
James Best as Niergaard
Alan Baxter as General Loomis
Leo Chen as Colonel Li
P. C. Lee as Chinese general
