New Films
The World of Suzie Wong
By JOHN BEAUFORT
AN IMPROBABLE love story in a sordid milieu against the background of Hong Kong's contrasting squalor and beauty provide the elements for "The World of Suzie Wong." Adapted from the novel by Richard Mason and the stage romance by Paul Osborn, John Patrick's screen play retells how Robert Lomax (William Hol-den)， an American artist, meets and becomes captivated by Suzie Wong (Nancy Kwan), whose existence as a brothel "bar girl" belies her wishful daydreams of high-born respectability.
The film echoes with familiar, sentimental refrains, mingling the themes of Madame Butterfly, East and West, Caucasian chauvinism, moral hypocrisy and the wouldn't-be prostitute with the heart of gold. That "The World of Suzie Wong" pleads a persuasive case owes less to some carefully built-in rationalization than to the genuinely appealing performances of Miss Kwan and Mr. Holden.
By her freshness, simplicity, loveliness, and ingenuousness, Miss Kwan presents a Suzie whose innate goodness shines through her transparent world-liness. Product of sentimentally wishful thinking though Suzie may be, Miss Kwan makes her seem touchingly genuine, comic, and believable.
A similar feat has been achieved by Mr. Holden―an accomplishment more difficult, in some respects, since his popular image scarcely suggests the creative yearnings that would impel a successful professional man to chuck everything for a fling at being a painter. Furthermore, as the script tacitly acknowledges, Mr. Holden is too mature for the role of Robert Lomax. Notwithstanding these impediments, the star brings to the role a degree of conviction which survives even the script's more melodramatic absurdities.
"The World of Suzie Wong" captures the spectator and holds him, not by ex-
PACE EIGHT
CHINATOWN NEWS, FEB. 18, 1961
