OVP: Love is a Many-Splendored Thing (1955)

Film: Love is a Many-Splendored Thing (1955)
Stars: William Holden, Jennifer Jones, Torin Thatcher, Isobel Elsom
Director: Henry King
Oscar Nominations: 8 nominations/3 wins (Best Picture, Actress-Jennifer Jones, Costume Design*, Score*, Original Song-"Love is a Many-Splendored Thing"*, Cinematography, Art Direction, Sound)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

This week we are looking at five random Best Actress nominees, all films that I saw for the first time while on quarantine.  Yesterday we started with Barbara Stanwyck's first nomination for Stella Dallas, and today we jump some twenty years into the future with Jennifer Jones' final nomination (of five) for Love is a Many-Splendored Thing.  I don't entirely know why I have always been fascinated by the concept of this movie.  It might be the cumbersome title (with the grammatically correct but still unusual hyphen sported in the middle of it), or it could be the omnipresent grandeur of the title song (even if you've never seen this movie, you probably have already started singing it in your head).  But I genuinely had no idea what it was about, and maybe my intrigue stemmed from a genuine love of romantic epics.  Regardless, it got me my very first Best Picture nominee from 1955 (only one ceremony left and I'll have seen a nominee from every single Oscar Best Picture field), and of course going with the theme, we have Jennifer Jones' swan song with an Academy that was quite generous with her considering the scope of her career.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie takes place during the Chinese Civil War, and focuses almost exclusively on the relationship with Han Suyin (Jones), a Eurasian doctor who works in Hong Kong, and an American war correspondent Mark Elliott (Holden) (it's weird, quite frankly, how there is literally no side story in this film-can anyone think of an epic of this time period that would have done something like that other than Lawrence of Arabia?).  The two are clearly in love, though Mark is married, and Suyin is certain that she will never love again after her husband passed away years before the story.  Making matters more complicated is the racism of it all-it's considered inappropriate for the biracial Suyin to marry Mark, and the white people who pull the strings (and can decide if Suyin gets employed) make sure to let her know this as the movie progresses.  In the end, it doesn't matter-Mark dies covering the war, and Suyin mourns him on the hilltop they first fell in love, and last said goodbye.

There's a lot to unpack with a movie like Love is a Many-Splendored Thing, because racism is definitely going to poison most of the enjoyment you might get out of the picture.  The reality is that Jones, in real life, is not of any Asian descent-she is entirely of European descent, and therefore is in yellow face here.  This is pretty disqualifying for modern audiences (as it should be), but even if you're going to try to view it within its time, it's hard to do that because Jones' ethnicity is really the only thing the film has any interest in with her character, and Jones is quite frankly not a good enough actress to make us vest in her as a performer even if her character is a stereotype.  Almost every scene is her pointing out that she's Eurasian, as if to constantly remind the audience that white Jennifer Jones isn't supposed to be white, and as a result the comments she makes about Chinese culture, and about the difficulties she faces as an Asian woman...it's rough, and pretty disgusting.

On a technical level, though the film is impressive looking.  The cinematography's great-I loved the outdoors shot (in a rarity for the 1950's, chunks of the film were shot on-location, and it shows), and the lavish houses are incredible even if they're mildly ridiculous.  The sound work is good, the costumes are meticulous & lovely, and the score, is well, wonderful.  The song is sung by an orchestral choral in the film, but would be covered by everyone in the years that followed (most successfully the Four Aces), and it's gorgeous.  It's so effective, in fact, that you'll think that you just saw a better movie than you did.  Then you'll see a still photo of Jones in the movie, and be reminded that, yeah, this is problematic even for a film trope that is always problematic.