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India Press Store - World of Suzie Wong
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List Price: $19.95
Our Price: $15.83
Your Save: $ 4.12 ( 21% )
Availability:
Manufacturer: Paramount
Starring: William Holden, Nancy Kwan, Sylvia Syms, Michael Wilding, Jacqui Chan
Directed By: Richard Quine
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Binding: VHS Tape
EAN: 9786301216128
Format: Closed-captioned
ISBN: 6301216121
Label: Paramount
Manufacturer: Paramount
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: Paramount
Release Date: 1989-02-01
Running Time: 126
Studio: Paramount
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating: 
Summary: not happy
Comment: when i purchased the products there were no indications they could not be played in Australia. I asked for a replacement and were not willing to help me they just gave me the run around
Customer Rating:
Summary: IRRESISTIBLY, DELICIOUSLY BAD! "YOU BELIEVE?"
Comment: "It'd be laughable if it weren't so filthy!" rants one character in THE WORLD OF SUZIE WONG, but au contraire, this costly 1960 film is laughable BECAUSE it's so filthy. Refreshingly unlike many other Hollywood hooker sagas -- the kind where Elizabeth Taylor's paid cash to model gowns, or Audrey Hepburn gets $50 for the powder room -- Nancy Kwan seems to know she's playing a whore in Wong.
When penniless artist William Holden, who lives atop a sleazy Hong Kong brothel, spies Kwan in the building's pick-up bar, we're told she is the "most popular girl -- got sex appeal!" And how: her hot-cha dance routine still registers, decades after the fact, on the Bad Movie Bump 'n' Grind Allure-O-Meter. Holden asks Kwan to his room, but when he says, "Can't pay much, but I'd like you to pose for me," she replies, "Just sit? No, I lose face. My girlfriends will say, 'You go to gentleman's room and sit? You're slipping!'" Since there's no story unless she changes her mind, Kwan instantly reconsiders, asking hopefully, "Take clothes off?" Curbing his artistic impulses for a moment, Holden takes Kwan off to dinner, during which the spunky prostitute admits hooking is "dirty," but insists, "I not dirty street girl. Inside, I still good." To demonstrate this, she offers herself up as dessert--for free. When Holden rejects her, she starts picking up men out in the street. As she chirps, "Hi, sailor!" over and over with irresistable neediness in her voice, we can only wonder: How long will it take before Holden falls?
Quite a while, thanks to Kwan's trampy behavior. When Holden decks a gob who's called Kwan (accurately) "a filthy little slut," she asks him, "Do me a favor--let me tell my girlfriends you beat me up." (He refuses, but Kwan does so anyway, eliciting this from another whore: "You're very lucky!") However, when Kwan starts a catfight because she thinks that Holden is flirting with another vixen, she's gone too far. "I came her to paint," Holden snarls at her. "I can't have you giving me your love on the days that you're free." Conveniently, fellow tramp-hound Michael Wilding barges in with news he's split with his wife and wants to make Kwan his "permanent girlfriend." Kwan gives him the old "I not dirty street girl" line, adding, "If I your regular girlfriend, I never go with another man." And off she goes with him.
Respectable English art expert Sylvia Syms (this crazy film's craziest character, inasmuch as she views Holden as marriage material) starts posing for paintings in Kwan's stead -- at least til Kwan returns to show off her kept-woman wardrobe. "Take that terrible dress off," Holden hollers. "You look like a cheap European streetwalker." (Helpfully, he rips the clothes off her -- in the name of the fashion police, mind you, not because he wants her looking like a cheap Eurasian streetwalker.
After Wilding's estranged wife samples what he's been learning in Kwan's bed, she wants him back pronto. Holden agrees to break this bad news, and when he does, hang on for Kwan's full meltdown -- a bizarre identity-crisis split that leads, as such things often do, to a happy ending. Suddenly taking on the personality of a demure virgin, Kwan once again cries, "I not dirty street girl!" and then says, "I want to be like nice English girl for you. I go now." She exits Holden's room, then bounds right back in, announcing, "It's now tomorrow. You my first man. You believe?" Strange? Yep, but not as strange as Holden's reply: "I believe. And you're my first girl."
OK, so they face a cruel, uncomprehending world. Sym's Brit dad asks Holden in alarm, "You'd be happy to spend the end of your days with a little, old, Chinese wife?" But aren't these the kind of problems that bind a couple together? Somewhere, they're living happily ever after together, right now.
You believe?
Customer Rating:
Summary: The World of Suzie Wong
Comment: My mother actually bought it and I haven't yet actually watched it right through. She finds it a very good movie.
Customer Rating:
Summary: The World of Suzie Wong
Comment: The sound volume reduces after about 20 minutes then goes completely off.
I will be returning this movie soon.
If any of the others do the same I will return all of my purchases and never buy again.
Chester
Customer Rating:
Summary: An excellant love story
Comment: Holden is great, and Nancy Kwan as beautiful as she is just dropped out of sight after this movie. A tear jerker, but a good one as to the way the real orient is!
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Editorial Reviews:
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A prim young Chinese woman on the Kowloon ferry accuses a middle-aged American of stealing her purse--thus begins a culture-clash romance. Seeking to escape his stifled life, Robert (William Holden, Stalag 17, Sunset Boulevard) has come to Hong Kong to become an artist. He rediscovers the girl from the ferry and learns she is not what she seemed; she's a prostitute named Suzie Wong (Nancy Kwan, Flower Drum Song). Though Robert resists her charms, she becomes his model, and their relationship grows surprisingly complex. While The World of Suzie Wong can be patronizing and has some dubious interpretations of Chinese manners and mores, it's also sophisticated (in a censored sort of way) about love, sex, and social pressure. A viewer may scoff at the child-like hookers, yet find the movie accumulates an unexpected emotional force, particularly through its exploration of how the characters maintain their illusions. --Bret Fetzer
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