Love Is a Many Splendored Thing Reviews

A literate screenplay by Patrick helps this bathetic tale, but what really helped to sell the movie was the incredibly successful title song by Fain and Webster. Jones is a Eurasian physician in Hong Kong who falls for Holden, a married war correspondent from the United States. Their love grows, despite several problems. She finds an undercurrent of prejudice at the medical facility where she is employed, the bluenoses of British Hong Kong are nettled by miscegenation, and there is no way for the lovers to unite forever when Holden's wife refuses to grant him freedom. Their affair continues until he is sent to Korea to cover the "police action" there and is killed. Jones goes back to the high and windy hill where the two shared so many happy hours and the film concludes. Jones wears some lovely Chinese dresses, Hong Kong looks inviting, and Holden does a fine job. Despite all that, this is basically a sappy story that does not hold up and that is so obviously designed to jerk tears that it seems more self-parody than love story. The best thing about the movie is that it gave Hollywood's excellent Asian-American acting community a chance to work. One of the reasons Patrick was chosen for this adaptation is that he wrote the play "The Teahouse of the August Moon"; the producers apparently saw no difference between Eurasians and Okinawans. Winner of three Academy Awards: Best Song, Best Score and Best Costume Design. It was nominated for Best Picture (it lost to MARTY), Best Cinematography, Best Art Direction/Set Decoration and Best Sound Recording.