China, 1926. Sailor 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 beautiful fellow teacher, Shirley Eckert, whom he immediately falls in love with.

While Holman and his crew sail the Yangtze River, clashes between Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists and Communists escalate. While trying to save the missionaries, Holman and his men find themselves in the middle of a battle…

A veteran Hollywood craftsman, Robert Wise was truly at ease in absolutely every register. From horror films (the excellent La Maison du Diable, in 1963) to musical dramas (The Unforgettable Story of the West), Film noir (We Won Tonight) or science fiction (The Day the Earth Stood Still), he produced many cinema classics.

Barely crowned with a crop of Oscars in 1965 (including Best Director), Whis would go on to score another absolute classic the following year, the war/adventure film La Cannonière du Yang Tse.

Adapted from a Richard McKenna novel, this (long!) historical mural, shot while America was in the midst of the Vietnam War, was also a subtle anti-colonialist indictment, in which an impeccable Steve McQueen shines once again, ripped. Between a soldier’s loyalty and conscience.

The queen of erotic cinema is in the making

Obviously much more discreet on the poster, logically it did not appear there, although there is an apprentice actress (albeit already 34 years old) Franco-Tai, named Mariat Andriane Bibid, who plays a Chinese prostitute in the film. .

It is Emmanuelle Arsani who would go on to write the erotic bestseller Emmanuelle, which would be made into a film by Just Jaeckin in 1974.

In a 1967 interview on the Swiss Roman television program, he told how he came to film. Yangtze Gunboat. “I accidentally became an actor!” he says. Rare video.

Married since 1956 to ex-diplomat director Louis-Jacques Rolle-Andrian, her acting career, as she talks about in the video above, will take off very (very) quickly. He shines most in writing Emmanuel’s many erotic adventures: Emmanuel 4, Emmanuel 5, Emmanuel in the 7th Sky, Goodbye Emmanuel, Emmanuel in Space… Emmanuel Arsani died in June 2005, aged 73.