The Inn of the Sixith Happiness (1958)

Very much a production of its time The Inn of the Sixth Happiness gives the life of missionary Gladys Aylward the full Hollywood treatment. Both CinemaScope spectacle and melodrama, it was directed by Mark Robson, who had just brought Payton Place to the screen the previous year. The short, plain, British missionary is here portrayed by tall, gorgeous, Swede Ingrid Bergman who pulls it off with the same sweet, religious sincerity she brought to The Bells of Saint Mary's. Among the ways the film plays lose with the truth is shoehorning a love interest in for the life long spinster who claimed never to have kissed a man. The love interest is a Chinese general who is made to be half Dutch and played by Curt Jurgans, because 1958. The local Mandarin is played by another white man, Oscar winner Robert Donat in his last performance, and he's really great in this. The movie felt a little too long to me but is generally well done, and you can tell the studio spent some serious money on this thing. It's subject Gladys Aylward was not pleased with the film and I'd be curious to see what a more faithful rendering of her life might look like in a film today. Still Hollywood would often change the truth because they felt they could get a good movie that way, and this film certainly qualifies as a good one. ***1/2