Wow! Such a good movie.

Wonderful character development!

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

It is funny, sexy, exciting, and every bit as resonant today as 1935- really saying something for a post-Code picture.It's MGM of the period all the way. Bang bang bang, nonstop action, mile-a-minute dialogue. Basically a shameless retread of Red Dust, I actually like it a lot better than Red Dust. It's also got a dash of Shanghai Express, which is fine. Maybe it's the fact that I'm drawn to "souls at sea"" pictures and ensemble films about disparate groups thrown together by fate, their bizarre stories intertwining.And what an ensemble this film boasts: There's Harlow, who by now could act, working her sex-clown routine with total confidence- fierceness to the Nth degree. Acing scene after scene, playing off Gable and Wallace Beery and Hattie MacDaniel (who has a rare good role, although not as substantial as it could be) just wonderfully. She should have gotten a Best Actress nomination for this. Then there's Gable as Gable. Roz Russell is stuck playing one of the dour, humorless Brits MGM frequently cast her as in the thirties (see also Night Must Fall and The Citadel ). Donald Meek and Lewis Stone and Robert Benchley and plenty of others, all making the most out of their bits.The stories are tight, every character compelling, and great dialogue all wonderfully pieced together. I don't often agree with Leonard Maltin or find his assessments of films too astute, but he is completely correct when he calls China Seas "impossible to dislike."China Seas, a minor title in the classic film library, is the film to show to win people over to the "Black and White" side and show them how exciting and entertaining a classic movie can be.

Jean Harlow steals the film as a fast talking, brassy blond up to no good with being in cahoots with Wallace Beery, the latter bringing pirates on board to lift a case of gold from the ship.As if this isn't enough, the passengers had to endure a major typhoon knocking everything around and causing near mayhem.Clark Gable is the captain of the ship. With a gruff exterior, but a kindness only made by him, he is endearing here. Rosalind Russell, a widow, is on board with her wonderful English accent to woo Gable.The scenes with the typhoon raging are marvelously staged and Beery is his usual no nonsense character wonderfully matched by Harlow's fast way of living.

CHINA SEAS (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1935), directed by Tay Garnett, is an adventure/drama featuring an all-star cast consisting of top-named performers as Clark Gable, Jean Harlow, Wallace Beery and Lewis Stone, the same actors who had earlier worked together in THE SECRET SIX (MGM, 1931). For this reunion, a lot has happened during those four short years. While Beery and Stone starred in THE SECRET SIX, with Harlow and Gable in secondary supporting roles, Gable and Harlow now assume the leads in CHINA SEAS while Beery and Stone support them. Reminiscing the earlier SHANGHAI EXPRESS (Paramount, 1932) starring Marlene Dietrich, shifting from a train to a shipboard vessel, each allowing for love and adventure along with Chinese bandit attacks as its focal point of interest, CHINA SEAS also includes some doses of verbal comedy to move it along.Taken from the book by Crosbie Garstin, the story gets underway with plot development and character introduction prior to the sailing of the "Kin Lung" from the port of Hong Kong to its destination to Sinpapore. Passengers of the vessel include: Sir Guy Wilmerding (C. Aubrey Smith), the management director of the line; Alan Gaskell (Clark Gable), the ship's tough captain; Dolly Portland, better known as China Doll (Jean Harlow), Alan's former girlfriend who becomes jealous over his reunion with an old flame, Sybil Barclay (Rosalind Russell), a dignified British widow; Charles McCaleb (Robert Benchley), a drunken American novelist; Jamesy MacArdle (Wallace Beery), a China Seas trader; Dawson (Dudley Digges), a chief officer; Rockwell (William Henry), a young officer; and Tom Davids (Lewis Stone), a former sea captain now reduced to third officer due to his cowardice responsible for the lost of his crew, among others. During the voyage, the Kim Lung goes through a serious typhoon before being attacked by pirates out for a shipment of 350,000 pounds worth of gold hidden away on board the ship, whereabouts known only by Gaskell. It so happens that one of the trusted passengers happens to be the ring leader holding half of the 100 pound note. After pirates attack the vessel, putting both Davids and Gaskell through the Chinese boot torture, it is up to one of the passengers to save the day. Other members of the cast include Hattie McDaniel (Isabel McCarthy); Akim Tamiroff, Donald Meek, Edward Brophy, Willie Fung and Ivan Lebedeff.An exciting production not as better known as MGM's earlier all-star productions as GRAND HOTEL (1932) and DINNER AT EIGHT (1933), but a worthy offering with elements of surprises during its 89 minutes. He-man Gable and feisty Harlow make a grand pair. Wallace Beery garners enough attention through his usual Beery-method of acting, especially in tense scenes involving him and Harlow, though not as classic as their second pairing together in the popular classic DINNER AT EIGHT (1933). It's also interesting seeing a youthful Rosalind Russell, early in her career, in her Myrna Loy-ish type performance. Let's not overlook Lewis Stone playing a frightful mate hoping to break away from his cowardice stigma. With a cast and plotting such as this, it's totally impossible for any movie buff not to like CHINA SEAS.Available on video cassette dating back to the mid 1980s in clam shell covering, and decades later on DVD, CHINA SEAS, which was at one time a late show favorite years before becoming a regular fixture on Turner Classic Movies cable channel ever since 1994. (***1/2)

This film has some good things going for it. First, a cast of MGM's finest -- Clark Gable, Jean Harlow, Wallace Beery, Rosalind Russel, Robert Benchley, among others. Gable is the skipper of a somewhat battered passenger liner in Asiatic waters. Harlow is the girl he's been associated with, so to speak, a little "tainted", as Gable puts it. But who the hell is HE to talk? He comes aboard just before sailing, filthy and unshaven, hung over. He barks out orders to the crew and to just about everyone else. Rosalind Russel is an old flame from London and her husband has died so she is now "available." Wallace Beery is a likable big lug who gambles and drinks but is in cahoots with some pirates who take over the ship, just after the big hurricane hits. Benchley is thrown in as a harmless drunk given to wisecracks and non sequiturs, only one of which (about his being a chess master) is truly funny.Second, there is the set dressing by Cedric Gibbons. Love it. Everything is painted white. The crummy little ship has a saloon the size of Madison Square Garden. This is one of those films in which all the men dress in white suits and wear pith helmets. The women's garb is more nearly traditional. Rosalind Russell has an English accent and an equally hoity-toity wardrobe. Harlow is dressed in slinky gowns that seem to glow in the dark and she eschews brassieres.There are some slam-bang special effects during the hurricane. And a great scene in which the Malay pirates take over the ship and torture Gable to get him to squeal about where the gold is hidden. "Oh, NO! Not the Malay BOOT! Tell them where the gold is. I can't stand to witness this!" (That's Wallace Beery, who hasn't been outed as a traitor yet, in mock anguish over the torture Gable is about to undergo.) It seems that we're all set up for another rousing, funny, exotic adventure movie along the lines of "Gunga Din," except that the script keeps undercutting the light-heartedness with serious, sometimes rather insightful dialog. Example: Harlow is jealous of Russell and, at the captain's dinner table, she has a couple of drinks and starts shouting lewd and suggestive remarks. Russell: "You must be very fond of him." Harlow: "Whaddaya mean?" Russell: "To humiliate yourself like this." There are a lot of ways Russell's punch line could have been delivered -- angrily, with bitchiness, for instance, but Russell's tone and expression convey empathy and sadness. Gable too is given some sober, thoughtful exchanges but acts as if he can't quite bring himself to believe what he's saying, as if he'd prefer the careless, rough-hewn character that first appeared on the screen, kind of like his character in "Red Dust." It's an above average flick for its genre though. All that whiteness is almost blinding.