Director Nicholas Ray's last studio film '55 Days at Peking' is the story of 900 foreign nationals (400 of them solders) from 10 nations traped for two score and 15 days inside a walled diplomatic compound at the Chinese capital during the Boxer Rebellion in 1900. David Niven plays a British diplomat, Charlton Heston an American Major and Ava Gardner a Russian baronness.
Receving mixed reviews and making a break even $10 Million at the box office, it's handsomly mounted but bland. People dying in proximity to Gardner becomes something of a running gag. The scheme that Heston and Niven come up with to blow up the munitions depot is the funniest part of a movie that really shouldn't be this dull. Theme song performed by Andy Williams. **
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