China Seas (1935)

hyped garbage

How sad is this?

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

A mixture of high comedy and hair raising drama, this entertaining Grand Hotel of the high seas is a mass collection of emotions. Captain Clark Gable is loved by two strong willed women: great lady Rosalind Russell and the cheap seeming Jean Harlow who longs to be classy but can't rise above crassness. The lecherous Wallace Beery is a gentleman of low class manners but hidden lust, and taking the opportunity of a possible capsizing storm to make his move on her. Other characters come in and out of the story and provide excellent support in varying character parts, and some shocking moments provide genuine horror straight out of a Karloff or Lugosi movie.Harlow is an absolute delight, sparkling with everybody from Gable, Beery and Russell to Hattie McDaniel as her lavishly dressed maid who thrills at the idea of skinny Harlow hiving her "full figure" an evening gown she intends to only take out "slightly" to fit in it. The little known Soo Yong may look like a porcelain doll but spits acid when ever in Harlow's presence. Also memorable are Lewis Stone as Gable's assistant, Robert Benchley as a drunken passenger and Dudley Digges as a nefarious crew member. Lavish and filled with a few brilliant moments (particularly the storm where a man is repeatedly run over by a rolling vehicle), this still fails to strike a really great cord because of its changing moods. Sometimes it's best to stick with one mood, although the irony of the ship being attacked by modern day pirates is rather timely.

Three MGM stars brawl their way from Hong Kong to Singapore in this Far East shipboard adventure that never picks much steam relying instead on the reputation of its stars to keep course. Capt. Gaskell (Clark Gable) prepares to take his ship on it usual route across the China Sea with a variety of passengers from all walks. The voyage is complicated for Gaskell however when a current flame Dolly ( Jean Harlow ) and a long lost one Sibyl (Rosalind Russell) book passage. The captain must also contend with typhoons, pirates and securing the safety of a fortune in gold. When Sybil begins to wedge herself more into the picture with Gaskell Dolly behaves badly and irrationally throws in with Jamesy ( Wallace Beery ) whose in league with the pirates.There's some decent wisecracking by Harlow in this lemon of a star vehicle for the three but for the most part it's a cacophony of yelling between them while Russell remains composed and undeveloped. Robert Benchley is also on board to provide comedy relief but seems as if he was filming one of his shorts subjects on the same set. Content to let the stars do what they do best China Seas squanders sub plot possibilities as well as give little attention to a scene that calls into question Gaskell's cold immorality regarding life and injury. Instead it chooses to keep the film in safe waters and dazzle you instead with the glow of its stars. Man the lifeboats.

The studios in the "Golden Age" of films loved to stick to successful formulas that worked for their actors and directors. Just go down the list of performers that you can recall: A fine actor like Basil Rathbone is either the heavy or villain, or Sherlock Holmes (but not, as he wished, Rhett Butler). Jean Harlow and Marlene Dietrich could not play normal housewives, nor could Joan Crawford play a stupid woman. Oliver Hardy could always have a wife, but never a happy marriage (and if it approached happiness, Stan Laurel would help destroy that). Lewis Stone, sterling character actor, only achieved permanent stardom when he inherited the role of Judge Hardy from Lionel Barrymore, and he would remain the perfect, wise father to Mickey Rooney in a dozen films. As for Barrymore, while he had a higher degree of stardom than Stone, he fell nicely into a niche as the original Dr. Leonard Gilespie, opposite Lew Ayres as Dr. Kildare.In 1932 MGM got the bright idea of making a dramatic film of Vicki Baum's "Grand Hotel" with an all star cast (John and Lionel Barrymore, Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford, Wallace Beery, Lewis Stone, Jean Hersholt, and Tully Marshall). The film won the best picture Oscar, so it became a standard for other MGM projects to copy. The best known is "Dinner At Eight" (both Barrymore brothers again, Beery again, Jean Harlow, Marie Dressler, Billy Burke, Edmund Lowe, Lee Tracy, Hersholt again). But "David Copperfield", "The Prisoner OF Zenda", and several other Selznick films, and "The Women" (with only a cast of actresses - Crawford, Shearer, Russell, Fontaine, Goddard, and Boland) followed the same formula with variants by the settings and plots of the films."China Seas" was an early example of the formula "all star" film, a "Grand Hotel" set at sea. The plot is varied: C. Aubrey Smith is having a cargo of gold shipped by his ship captained by Gable. The passengers include Harlow (who has had a long standing on-again, off-again romance with Gable), Russell (Gable's current love interest - a real English lady type), Beery (an untrustworthy gambler and thief - he may be planning to steal the gold), Robert Benchley (an American novelist on a permanent toot), Edward Brophy and Lillian Bond as a married couple on a tour (Ms Bond has her secrets from her husband), Akim Tamiroff (a man who knows how to take advantage of secrets), Dudley Digges (a self-satisfied and smug chief executive officer), and Lewis Stone (a former sea captain, now reduced in rank and a pariah due to an act of cowardice).The film is a lively mixture of comedy and tragedy, including the death of one of the villains. Harlow demonstrates an interesting way of playing cards and drinking that suggests more than the film shows. Benchley never appears clear eyed and sober throughout all the film. Stone, in a powerful moment, leaves the self-righteous Digges with a permanent black mark on his self-esteem. Gable and Beery show what the "boot" is, and how effective it is. This is a film where the activities of the cast are so involving you never get bored even when you see the film another time. And at the end, as the ship reaches port (as in "Grand Hotel"), life goes on as though nothing (including a pirate attack) ever even occurred.

MY RATING- 7.1A fairly entertaining romantic adventure with Gable having to deal with the dumb blonde Jean Harlow. She's very sexy here, and this mov helped to create the myth. Also starring Wallace Beery as the bad guy, Rosalind Russel as the old Gable's sweetheart, and a nice little performance by Lewis Stone.The mov contains some crude and unecessary violence like in the scene some colossal machines crush poor chinese fellows.