Underplayed Gems

The Mountain Road (1960)

The Mountain Road poster
Directed by
Daniel Mann
Genre
drama film, war film
Country
United States
Runtime
1h 42m
Rated
NR
Rating
6.6 of 10 from 11 voters
Elsewhere
IMDb
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How it feels

A U.S. Army major leads a demolition crew in China during World War II. He struggles with the morality of destroying infrastructure and with tensions among his own troops.

somberreflectivetensemorally conflictedslow-burngrimseriousbleak

What happens

The Mountain Road is a 1960 American war film starring James Stewart and directed by Daniel Mann. Set in China and based on the 1958 novel of the same name by journalist-historian Theodore H. White, the film follows the attempts of a U.S. Army major to destroy bridges and roads potentially useful to the Japanese during World War II and the Second Sino-Japanese War. White's time covering China for Time magazine during the war led to an interview with former OSS Major Frank Gleason Jr., who served as head of a demolition crew that inspired the story and film. Gleason was later hired as an uncredited technical adviser for the film. The film is a rather somber treatment of World War II and the Second Sino-Japanese War. This includes themes that were taboo for Hollywood during the war years, such as tensions between allies and racism among American troops. The protagonist is a frustrated and morally conflicted U.S. officer unsure about the value of his mission. For these reasons, The Mountain Road is often labeled as anti-war, but it was made with the cooperation of the Pentagon, and it is much more respectful of the military as an institution than are the well-known anti-war films of the 1960s and 1970s. As a World War II combat veteran, Stewart had vowed never to make a war film, concerned that they were rarely realistic. The Mountain Road was the only war movie set during World War II in which he starred as a combatant. Stewart, however, had been featured in a wartime short, Winning Your Wings (1942), and in a civilian role in Malaya (1949). Harry Morgan, another cast member in The Mountain Road, later said that he believed that Stewart made an "exception for this film because it was definitely anti-war". (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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