This motion picture is dedicated to France. More than 300 years ago, French missionaries were sent to Indochina to teach love of God and love of fellow man. Gradually, French influence took shape in the Vietnamese land. Despite many hardships, they advanced their way of living, and the thriving nation became the rice bowl of Asia. Vast riches were developed under French guidance until 1941, when Japanese troops moved in and made the rice bowl red with the blood of the defenders. In 1945, when the Japanese surrender was announced, a Moscow-trained Indo-Chinese revolutionist who called himself Ho Chi Minh began the drive to make his own country another target for Chinese Communists. Headquartered in the North, he called the new party Viet Minh. With the end of the Korean War, France was left alone to hold the hottest front in the world and became the barrier between communism and the rape of Asia. Members of the Foreign Legion imported from North Africa fought valiantly under the French flag, but the ammunition pipeline from Moscow could not be found. Bombs and shells made in Russia were stocked in secret tunnels along the mountain range of the China Gate. This arsenal was winning the war for the Communists.
These are the opening lines of the narrator in China Gate (1957). This is not an ironic suffering from white man syndrome narrator, but an actual dedication of the film. Truth be told, I had no intention of watching western pro imperial cold war propaganda a day before my NBHM interview (and in case I only watched the first 15 minutes, for DD keeps scolding me to go back to studying for the interview, she is out on lunch when I am typing it), I was trying to watch the Bollywood China Gate (1998)but me being me made an mistake and this happened. Not the first time I made such a mistake, it happened before with The Flight of the Emperor.
Whatever the circumstances, the black and white film has declared the White colonists to be perfectly white in their actions in Viet Nam. It was perhaps not enough, the director Samuel Fuller writes in his book, which WP paraphrases as:
Before China Gate was to be released, Fuller received a call from Romain Gary, the French Consul-General in Los Angeles, inviting him to lunch. Gary said the film's prologue was too harsh towards France and asked Fuller to change it. Fuller refused, but the two became firm friends with similar interests. The film was never released in France.
Even this level of praising France for allegedly advancing the locals' "way of living " is seen as too harsh. I don't know how to make it seem better to colonial sympathisers, but they did think it had to be. This is the level of propaganda in the 'first world' just a few decades before, and people will call Dhurandhar 2 as propaganda.
In the little I watched, one thing is clear, the filmmakers are not racists. In fact, academic consensus seems to be these types of war films actually were pioneers in racial unity by pitting Americans as a whole against 'the enemy' or 'the Reds'. In fact, a paper goes on to say:
One thing that did adhere to Fuller’s career in its entirety was a persistent interest in race and racism in the US. Issues of racism against Asians, Asian-Americans and African Americans are brought to the fore in films like The Steel Helmet, China Gate, The Crimson Kimono, Shock Corridor and White Dog, not to mention his script for The Klansman (1974); against Native Americans in Run of the Arrow; and against Jews in the invocations of the Holocaust in Verboten! and The Big Red One.
Still, I found one of the opening scenes to be a bit problematic. The narrator notes the lack of food in a southern hamlet isolated by the freedom fighters of the Viet Cong. All animals are being eaten up, save for a puppy named Pierre, hidden by a boy we later learn is a main character.
A man finds the puppy sticking out from the child's clothes and chases him with a knife with hunger in his eyes. Whether it was an attack on dog meat consumption of the Vietnamese people or just a way to show the extent of hunger that an animal so dear to American sensibilities can be eaten is not clear. But I will have to lean towards the latter now that I have read the academic consensus. It will make sense, as The Making of Global International Relations: Origins and Evolution of IR at its Centenary notes that WW2 was just a victory against so-called scientific racism. Another example, 'his only cross to bear is that of eyes' referring to a part Asian child, is maybe just dated language rather than racism, when the film actually does challenge the discrimination against asian americans, as a review notes about the mother of the child:
Lucky Legs occupies the center of Fuller’s preposterous sex fantasy / melodramatic tangle. She has a son by (who else) Sgt. Brock, the ex-husband who abandoned her the moment he saw his child’s Chinese features. Brock is not bothered that Lucky Legs (this is really buried in context) is a prostitute and party girl — but gets freaked out by the thought of having a bi-racial child.
Clearly at attack on the still persisting double game of American morality. Anyway, writing more would not be fair game at this stage, and I will return and complete the review later after finishing.
