Movie, 1961

A film which one could dismiss as daft and frivolous, were it not for some jaw dropping ‘of its time’ racism, preserved across the decades in the playing and portrayal of Chinese people. There are some fairly decent scenes here and there. A film in which life is cheap and ‘Orientals’ are pitched in cruel contrast and are shown as savagely inferior to ‘Occidentals’. Some thick colours and stereotypical sets. If the over-the-top screening and representation of the ‘other’ wasn’t so extreme, the could be much to admire in this film, although this is a film where views on gender as well as race are beyond the pale……