For about a decade spanning the bridge from silent to sound Anna May Wong was a genuine movie star, the first actress of Asian ethnicity to really catch on in the United States. Enforcement of the production code clashed with her sensual image and the roles started to dry up, leaving her reduced to B pictures, 'Lady from Chungking' is one such.
This 'boost the allies' picture made during the war, has Wong as a leader in the resistance in Japanese occupied China. She helps rescue a couple of shot down American flyers, seduces a Japanese general, inspires a half Russian, half American singer, saves her village and is martyred, all in a little over an hour. She really carries this film, is well above the so so material; I should see some of her early stuff. Movie also boasts a character named Hans Gruber, who in Hans Gruber tradition mèets an untimley death. **
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