--- title: "Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing" year: 1955 kind: "film" canonical: "https://film.one/film/love-is-a-many-splendored-thing" fi1m_score: 60 critics_reviews: 3 published: "2026-09-20T02:55:24.119014+00:00" updated: "2026-09-20T02:55:54.234826+00:00" region: "US" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing (1955) Directed by Henry King · 1h 42m · MPA NR · Drama, Romance **Fi1m score: 60** · Critics: 3 of 6 reviews so far *In a sentence:* Two handsome people meet on a Hong Kong hill and the string section will not leave them alone > Henry King’s Hong Kong romance is handsomely photographed and hopelessly overscored, and Jennifer Jones is miscast as the Eurasian doctor whose in-between life is the whole story. Yet the last reel caught us off guard, and it may catch you too. ## Synopsis Hong Kong, 1949. Dr. Han Suyin (Jennifer Jones), a Eurasian doctor, works at a hospital under the correct and cautious Dr. John Keith (Murray Matheson). At a party given by Humphrey and Adeline Palmer-Jones (Torin Thatcher and Isobel Elsom) she meets Mark Elliott (William Holden), an American correspondent who asks her to dinner before he has finished his drink. She refuses him, then refuses him again, and then does not. Mark is married, though he has not lived with his wife in years, and Hong Kong society notices everything. The two take to meeting on a hill above the harbour, away from the hospital and the Palmer-Joneses, while Suyin’s sister Suchen (Donna Martell) arrives from the mainland with nothing. ## Review Henry King takes Han Suyin’s novel about her own life and makes of it a studio romance shot against a real city. A Eurasian doctor, an American correspondent, a colony that watches everyone: the material has weight, and the film knows it. What it does with that weight is mostly to arrange it prettily behind two people talking about whether they are allowed to be in love. It is decent, it is often lovely to look at, and it is flawed in a way that sits right at its centre. Start with what works, because it works well. Leon Shamroy’s Hong Kong looks like a city rather than a set. The harbour is full of junks. The streets behind the hospital are crowded with people who have somewhere else to be. The hill where Mark and Suyin meet looks down on a skyline with weather in it. Shamroy lets the frame fill up at the edges, so that even the love scenes have a city going on around them, and that is the best idea in the film. Now the trouble. Han Suyin is half Chinese, and her difficulty in every scene is that neither the British nor the Chinese quite claim her. Jennifer Jones is not, and plays her in eyeliner and a straight black fringe. It was the practice of the time and we are not pretending to be shocked by it, but it hollows the picture out. Every scene about prejudice is played by someone the prejudice could never touch, and Jones, who is a careful and intelligent actress, spends her energy on posture and vowels rather than on feeling. The Chinese performers the film does have, Richard Loo, Soo Yong, Philip Ahn and Keye Luke, are given relatives and servants to play and very little to say. William Holden does what Holden does: loosens his tie, leans on a doorframe, and says his lines as if they had only just occurred to him. He is likeable and he is not much more than that, because John Patrick’s screenplay gives him almost nothing to do except propose things and be refused. The two of them discuss their love the way colleagues might discuss a difficult case, at length and in full sentences. Murray Matheson’s Dr. John Keith supplies the disapproval, Torin Thatcher and Isobel Elsom the gossip, and Jorja Curtright, as Suyin’s friend Suzanne, gets the one properly sharp scene, about what the colony does to a woman who chooses the wrong man. Then there is the music. Alfred Newman’s score is loud, and it is nearly constant. It arrives before the feeling, swells under the feeling, and then stays on after the feeling has left. There are scenes here that would be quietly affecting if the orchestra allowed them to be, and it does not. William H. Reynolds cuts with the patience of a man who trusts his images, long dissolves, unhurried two-shots, and that patience is right for Shamroy and wrong for Patrick’s dialogue, which needed somebody to hurry it along. We will not say what the last reel shows. We can say that it moved us more than the ninety minutes before it had earned, and we were annoyed about that on the walk home. What did it was simple: King finally stops the talking. There is a stretch near the end with Jones alone on the hill, Shamroy holding a wide shot, the wind moving the grass, and for once the film lets a face and a landscape do the work the script had been doing badly. It is the kind of ending that makes you forgive things you should not, and we forgave some of them. Set against the best of its kind it comes up short. [*Brief Encounter*](https://film.one/film/brief-encounter) got more out of a railway buffet and a speck of grit than this gets out of a whole colony. But it runs 102 minutes, most of them are handsome, and the last few are more than that. Watch it for Shamroy’s Hong Kong and for the hill, and have something to hand for the end, because the film will insist. *Fi1m score 60, published 20 September 2026.* ## What the critics say With only three reviews in so far, the lean is warm but thin. Most critics agree on two things: the Hong Kong locations, shot in colour and CinemaScope, are the film’s chief asset, and Jennifer Jones is charming opposite William Holden as a romantic pairing with real appeal. Variety takes it as a sensitive, moving tear-jerker that is simple and offbeat in treatment; Empire finds the story trite but well executed, with an ending that lands emotionally. The dissent comes from The New York Times, which finds the romance elaborately sentimental and monotonous, the screenplay talkative, and the adaptation oddly indifferent to the city and people it is set among. ### Reviews we read (3) - **Variety**, Variety Staff (**): The critic praises the film as a fine, sensitive, and moving love story shot against authentic Hong Kong backgrounds, calling it unusual yet simple and offbeat in treatment. Performances by William Holden and Jennifer Jones are highlighted as a romantic team of great appeal in a well-made emotional tear-jerker. [Read](https://variety.com/1954/film/reviews/love-is-a-many-splendored-thing-1200417879/) - **Empire**, William Thomas (70/100, inferred): The critic finds the story trite but well executed with a strong emotional ending. Jennifer Jones's performance stands out as particularly charming. [Read](https://www.empireonline.com/movies/reviews/love-many-splendored-thing-review/) - **The New York Times**, Bosley Crowther (40/100, inferred): The critic finds the film elaborately sentimental and monotonous in its dew-dappled romance, with the theme song doing much to establish its emotional level alongside the talkative screenplay and earnest performances. While noting the exciting Hong Kong scenery in color and CinemaScope, the review faults the adaptation for lacking relevance to the locale and population. [Read](https://www.nytimes.com/1955/08/19/archives/love-is-a-few-splendors-shy-patricks-adaptation-of-suyin-novel.html) ## Details - **Director:** Henry King - **Director:** Henry King - **Screenplay:** John Patrick - **Novel:** Han Suyin - **Cinematography:** Leon Shamroy - **Editor:** William H. Reynolds - **Music:** Alfred Newman - **Producer:** Buddy Adler - **Cast:** Jennifer Jones as Dr. Han Suyin; William Holden as Mark Elliott; Torin Thatcher as Humphrey Palmer-Jones; Isobel Elsom as Adeline Palmer-Jones; Murray Matheson as Dr. John Keith; Virginia Gregg as Anne Richards; Richard Loo as Robert Hung; Soo Yong as Nora Hung - **Runtime:** 1h 42m - **Certificate (MPA):** NR - **Release (the US):** 18 August 1955 - **Genres:** Drama, Romance ## Where to watch in the US - Apple TV: rent $3.99, hd - Amazon Prime Video: rent $3.99, hd - Apple TV: buy $9.99, hd - Amazon Prime Video: buy $9.99, hd *Checked 2026-09-20.* Also available in: BR, CA, US. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country. ## Awards - Academy Awards 1956: Best Actress (nominated); Best Art Direction, Color (nominated); Best Cinematography, Color (nominated); Best Picture (nominated); Best Sound (nominated); Best Costume Design, Color (won); Best Original Dramatic or Comedy Score (won) - Golden Globes 1956: Best Film Promoting International Understanding (won) ## If you liked this - *Brief Encounter* (1945), Fi1m 90: The impossible affair done with a railway buffet and no orchestra to speak of — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/brief-encounter.md) - *The World of Suzie Wong* (1960): Holden back in Hong Kong, with the same harbour and rather more of the city - *Sayonara* (1957): American man, Asian woman, official disapproval; Brando and a slower, sadder Japan - *In the Mood for Love* (2000), Fi1m 91: Hong Kong, the early sixties, two neighbours, and everything left unsaid — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/in-the-mood-for-love.md) - *Hiroshima mon amour* (1959): A brief affair against history, told with none of the hand-holding --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/film/love-is-a-many-splendored-thing