Historical fresco signed by veteran Robert Wise, “La Cannonière du Yang Tse” also marked the screen debut of an apprentice actress, already 34 years old, who would shine a few years later in literature and erotic cinema. .
China, 1926. Seaman Jake Holman arrives in Shanghai to take up his post as chief engineer on the San Pablo, an old American gunboat. There he meets a young and pretty compatriot, Shirley Eckert, a teacher with whom he immediately falls in love.
While Holman sails the Yangtze River with his crew, clashes between Chiang Kai-shek’s nationalists and the Communists harden. While trying to rescue missionaries, Holman and his men find themselves in the heart of the fighting…
A veteran Hollywood craftsman, Robert Wise was definitely at ease in absolutely all registers. From horror films (the formidable La Maison du Diable, in 1963) to musical drama (unforgettable West Side Story), via Film noir (We won tonight) or science fiction (The day the Earth stopped), he delivered many cinema classics.
Barely crowned with a harvest of Oscars for his Sound of Music in 1965 (including Best Director), Wise was shooting another absolute classic the following year, the war/adventure film La Cannonière du Yang Tse.
Taken from a novel by Richard McKenna, this (long!) historical fresco, filmed while America was in the middle of the Vietnam War, was also a subtle anti-colonialist charge, in which shines, once again, an impeccable Steve McQueen, torn between his loyalty as a soldier and his conscience.
Obviously much more discreet on the poster, to the point of logically not appearing there, however, there is an apprentice actress (although already 34 years old) Franco-Thai by the name of Marayat Andriane Bibidh, who embodies in the film a Chinese prostitute.
This is Emmanuelle Arsan who will subsequently write the erotic bestseller Emmanuelle, which will be adapted into a film by Just Jaeckin in 1974.
Interviewed in a Swiss Romande TV program in 1967, she told how she had come to shoot in The Gunboat of the Yang Tse. “I became an actress accidentally!” she says. A rare video.
Married since 1956 to a former diplomat turned director, Louis-Jacques Rollet-Andriane, her acting career, as she talks about in the video above, will very (very) quickly fizzle out. She will shine above all in the writing of the many erotic adventures of Emmanuelle: Emmanuelle 4, Emmanuelle 5, Emmanuelle in the 7th heaven, Goodbye Emmanuelle, Emmanuelle in space… Emmanuelle Arsan died in June 2005, at the 73 years old.