55 Days at Peking is a 1963 American epic historical war film dramatizing the siege of the foreign legations' compounds in Beijing (then known in English as Peking) during the Boxer Rebellion, which took place in China in the summer of 1900. It was produced by Samuel Bronston for Allied Artists, with a screenplay by Philip Yordan and Bernard Gordon, and with uncredited contributions from Robert Hamer, Julian Halevy, and Ben Barzman. Noel Gerson wrote a screenplay novelization in 1963 under the pseudonym "Samuel Edwards".
The film was directed primarily by Nicholas Ray, although Guy Green and Andrew Marton assumed leadership in the latter stages of filming after Ray had fallen ill. Both men were uncredited. It stars Charlton Heston, Ava Gardner, and David Niven, with supporting roles by Flora Robson, John Ireland, Leo Genn, Robert Helpmann, Harry Andrews, and Kurt Kasznar. It also contains the first known screen appearance of future martial arts film star Yuen Siu Tien. Japanese film director Juzo Itami, credited in the film as "Ichizo Itami, appears as Col. Goro Shiba.
55 Days at Peking was released by Allied Artists on May 29, 1963. The film received mixed reviews, mainly for its historical inaccuracies and lack of character development. However, it was praised for its acting, direction, music, action sequences, and production design. In addition to its mixed critical reviews, the film grossed only $10 million at the box office against a budget of $10 million. Despite this, the film was nominated for two Academy Awards. It was director Ray's last film until Lightning Over Water (1980).
Plot Historical background Famine in Northern China is affecting millions of peasants by the summer of 1900. Starvation will be one of the major causes of the ensuing Boxer Rebellion. The legations of various industrialized countries are trapped in Beijing surrounded by Boxers who oppose their influence in China and the spread of Western Christianity.
The turmoil in China worsens when the Empress Dowager Cixi gives her approval to the Boxers to start oppressing foreigners throughout China, especially as 13 of China's 18 provinces have been forced into territorial concessions to overseas colonial powers. The situation escalates rapidly after an ambassador is murdered in the street. The Boxers begin a violent siege of Beijing's foreign legations quarter. Supported by Imperial troops, the Boxer secret societies begin killing Christians as anti-Western sentiment boils over.
Film plot Major Matt Lewis (based on Major John Twiggs Myers), arrives in China with a new detachment of US Marines. He is an experienced China hand who knows local conditions well. A love interest blossoms between him and Baroness Natasha Ivanova, a Russian aristocrat who, it is revealed, had an affair with a Chinese General, causing her Russian husband to commit suicide. The Russian Imperial Minister, who is Natasha's brother-in-law, has revoked her visa in an attempt to recover a valuable necklace. Although the Baroness tries leaving Beijing as the siege begins, she is forced by events to return to Major Lewis and volunteers in the hospital, which is battered by the siege and is running out of supplies. To help the defenders, the Baroness exchanges her very valuable jeweled necklace for medical supplies and food, but she is wounded in the process and later dies.
Lewis leads the small contingent of 400 multinational soldiers and US Marines defending the compound. As the siege worsens, Maj. Lewis forms an alliance with the senior officer at the British Legation, Sir Arthur Robertson, pending the arrival of a British-led relief force. After hearing that the force has been repulsed by Chinese forces, Maj. Lewis and Sir Arthur succeed in their mission to blow up a sizable Chinese arsenal.
As the foreign defenders conserve food and water, while trying to save hungry children, the Empress continues plotting with the Boxers by supplying aid from her Chinese troops. Eventually, a foreign relief force from the Eight-Nation Alliance arrives and defeats the Boxers. The relief expedition's troops reach Beijing on the 55th day and, following the Battle of Peking (Beijing), lift the siege of the foreign legations. Foreshadowing the demise of the Qing dynasty, rulers of China for the previous two and a half centuries, the Dowager Empress Cixi, alone in her throne room, having gambled her empire and lost, declares repeatedly to herself, "The dynasty is finished".
When the soldiers of the Eight-Nation Alliance have taken control of the city, after routing the Boxers and the remnants of the Imperial Army, Maj. Lewis assembles his men, having received new orders from his superiors to leave Beijing. He stops and circles back to retrieve Teresa, the young, half-Chinese daughter of one of his Marine comrades who was killed during the 55-day siege. Aboard his horse, she and Maj. Lewis leave the city behind, followed by his column of marching Marines.
Cast
Charlton Heston as Maj. Matt Lewis (based upon John Twiggs Myers) Ava Gardner as Baroness Natalie Ivanoff (Natalia Ivanova; sister-in-law of Sergei and Sophie Ivanoff/Ivanova) David Niven as Sir Arthur Robertson (based upon Sir Claude MacDonald) Flora Robson as Empress Dowager Cixi John Ireland as Sgt. Harry Leo Genn as Gen. Jung-Lu Harry Andrews as Father de Bearn Robert Helpmann as Prince Tuan Juzo Itami as Col. Goro Shiba Mervyn Johns as Clergyman Kurt Kasznar as Baron Sergei Ivanoff (based upon Mikhail Nikolayevich von Giers) Philippe Leroy as Julliard Paul Lukas as Dr. Steinfeldt Lynne Sue Moon as Teresa Elizabeth Sellars as Lady Sarah Robertson Massimo Serato as Menotti Garibaldi Jacques Sernas as Maj. Bobrinski Jerome Thor as Capt. Andy Marshall Geoffrey Bayldon as Smythe Joseph Furst as Capt. Hanselman Walter Gotell as Capt. Hoffman Alfredo Mayo as Spanish Minister (dubbed by Robert Rietti, based upon Bernardo de Cólogan) Martin Miller as Hugo Bergmann José Nieto as Italian Minister (based upon Giuseppe Salvago Raggi) Eric Pohlmann as Baron von Meck (based upon Clemens von Ketteler) Aram Stephan as Gaumaire The French minister (based upon Stephen Pichon) Robert Urquhart as Capt. Hanley Burt Kwouk as Old Man (voice)
Uncredited roles
Fernando Sancho as Belgian Minister (based upon Maurice Joostens) Nicholas Ray as U.S. Minister Maxwell (based upon Edwin H. Conger) Félix Dafauce as Dutch Minister (based upon Fridolin Marinus Knobel) Carlos Casaravilla as Japanese Minister (based upon Nishi Tokujirō) R.S.M. Ronald Brittain as Sgt. Britten Alfred Lynch as Gerald Michael Chow as Chiang George Wang as Kaige, Boxer Chief Lucille Soong as Concubine Yuen Siu Tien as Court Boxer John Moulder-Brown as Tommy Milton Reid as Boxer as Austrian minister (based upon )
Production Development On September 8, 1959, producer Jerry Wald announced he would be producing a film on the Boxer Rebellion tentatively titled The Hell Raisers for 20th Century Fox. He had hoped to star David Niven as a British officer and Stephen Boyd as a United States Marine commander while Hope Lange and France Nuyen were sought for supporting female roles. A few weeks later, on September 24, it was reported that Wald had signed Niven, Boyd, and Nuyen for their respective roles.
Meanwhile, producer Samuel Bronston had enjoyed commercial success from making historical spectacles in Spain, particularly King of Kings (1961), directed by Nicholas Ray, and El Cid (1961), directed by Anthony Mann starring Charlton Heston. In Paris, screenwriters Philip Yordan and Bernard Gordon were brainstorming ideas for potential historical epics. During one story conference, Gordon suggested the Boxer Rebellion, having recalled reading a theatrical play while working in the Story Department for Paramount Pictures during the 1940s. Yordan dismissed the idea, but after he had returned from a cruise in London, his wife located a book with a chapter titled "Fifty-five Days at Peking" inside a bookstore and showed it to him. Fascinated with the title alone, Yordan pitched the idea to Gordon, who noted that he had earlier pitched the Boxer Rebellion. In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Bronston stated he was attracted to the Boxer Rebellion because it showed "the unity of peoples, no matter what their beliefs, in the face of danger. This incident is what the UN symbolizes but has not yet achieved."
In September 1961, Bronston announced he was planning a trilogy of historical epics in Spain, among them was 55 Days at Peking and The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964). For 55 Days at Peking, Alec Guinness was being sought for a lead role while a British director was to be selected. Filming was slated to begin in spring 1962.
That same month, Wald told The New York Times that he was unhappy with Bronston's plans as his project had long been in development, with a final script draft being written by Barre Lyndon; Wald had also wanted Guinness to star in his project. Furthermore, he stated that he had filed an infringement complaint with the Motion Picture Association of America because he had approached Yordan to write a script in 1956. In April 1962, Wald instead sold the project to NBC as a television film, but his death three months later prevented its continuation.
Writing In 1977, Ray recalled, "The pressure was tremendous. On a $6 million production, I had no production manager, and a 21-year-old assistant director. No script. I had two artists in my office, one Chinese and one Spanish. I'd describe the scene to them, they'd draw it and then I'd give it to the so-called writers and say, "Write a scene around this?"
Prior to filming, Gordon and Ray had worked on a draft in which the former struggled writing as he contracted "colds and the flu and constantly ran a low-grade fever." After four weeks of work, they presented pages of their draft to Yordan, who ordered them to "go back to square one and write the kind of clumsy, impersonal, fat historical opus" that the international distributors wanted." With filming nearly approaching, Yordan suggested hiring Arnaud d'Usseau to assist Gordon with writing some scenes, particularly those with Gardner. Gordon later recalled that d'Usseau worked meticulously slowly and "simply couldn't find his way into our script." After a few weeks, d'Usseau left the project with none of his work being used. Shortly after this, blacklisted screenwriter Julian Halevy accepted Gordon's offer to rewrite some scenes, among of which were new scenes for the Empress Dowager.
By May 1962, Gordon delivered a 140-page shooting script, but most of the scenes were merely summarized or sketched in. That same month, Heston received the script, but disapprovingly jotted in his journal that "[t]he love story is very arbitrary, I think; the dialogue primitive." Filming would proceed without a finished script and on-set rewrites were frequent. It had been suggested that a native British screenwriter should revise the dialogue for Niven's character for which Robert Hamer had been hired for the task. Ultimately, his services were later turned away as Hamer had sunken into alcoholism. Yordan then recruited Jon Manchip White to help rework the script, but it did not pan out.
Four weeks later into production, Niven threatened to walk off set unless the script was rewritten. Yordan ordered Gordon to write "a Hamlet scene for him, and he'll shut up." Gordon then wrote four to five pages of monologue for Niven's character to self-reflect on his actions. The new scenes were sent to Niven, prompting him to return and finish filming.
Casting