To me, this movie is perfection.

Surprisingly incoherent and boring

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

I watched this movie on commercial late-night TV when I was 17 (in 1969). I am sure I then missed most of what was there to be gleaned, however, the soundtrack was compelling.The movie is something of a preview of coming events (not unlike "The Sand Pebbles") with respect to our involvement in Vietnam. I cannot understand how intelligent people could overlook the problems occasioned by fighting a war in a culture so different from our own.The grist of the movie is how power impacts people and that it is not likely that the first time it is granted, the recipient will be ready. I thought Stewart did an excellent job of articulating his conflict, and regrets, over his use of power, and the female lead's character seemed a little unsympathetic to a man who was genuinely conflicted.The movie leaves me with a trace of melancholy. In 1960, when it was released, there was still time to avoid the all but unfathomable foreign policy blunders of the late '60s. Vietnam impacted the thinking of much of the baby boom generation, and not for the better. It leaves me thinking that the war was fought mostly to satisfy the Joint Chiefs (after Cuba was off limits) and to generate huge amounts of cash for the defense industry.

I am a huge Jimmy Stewart fan. Yet this film left me cold. I think that the director and the screenplay conspire to not let him develop as a character. One time he is doing some poignant scene, where one thinks he has turned a corner in his short-sighted racist view of the larger world, and in moment, he goes right back to where he was. There's no carry-over. This film takes place in 1944 as the U. S. forces are in Chine, looking out for a tenuous ally. This particular group is a demolitions team whose purpose is to blow up roads and bridges and move on. The Japanese are very formidable and have decimated the Chinese people. Stewart expects the Chinese to act like Americans (Sound familiar?) but can't get them to follow his lead. Starvation and pain have a way of doing that. His relationship with a Chinese woman is the most interesting. I'm sure the cowardly film boards kept anything from happening. Once that factor in the film is thrown out, there is a skeleton left and it's not a very interesting one.

Enjoyed this film which was shown on TCM and I was very surprised to see that James Stewart, (Major Baldwin) starred in this film which is about a unit of American Engineers who were a demolition crew out to destroy a Chinese stockpile of weapons. These men had to travel on one mountain road which had plenty of these stockpiles to destroy in order to make certain the Japanese did not obtain any of these weapons. Major Baldwin runs into all kinds of problems, like a young Chinese woman named, Madame Sue-Mei Hung, (Lisa Lu) who was the wife of a Chinese General and he wanted her to travel with these American soldiers in order to secure her safety. Men get sick and there are many Chinese people who do not want the Americans blowing up this stockpile of weapons, as they can use them as a bargaining tool in order to secure food and shelter. There is even some romance going on between Madame Sue and Major Baldwin as he finds out her general husband was killed. Harry Morgan, (Sgt. Michaelson) gave a great supporting role along with Lisa Lu as the only woman in the picture. This film clearly points out the difficult problems that existed between American and Chinese relations during World War II. Great film to view, it is rather long and draw out, but we have to consider this film is from 1960.

The only film that World War II veteran James Stewart made during his career was one far away from his wartime experience flying missions over Germany in the European Theater. In fact it's the Chinese mainland theater which few have ever written about.One of those who did was Theodore H. White who in the year before his first Making of the President books came out wrote the novel on which The Mountain Road is based. White was a correspondent during World War II and he covered this forgotten theater of the war where more time was spent in the quarrels with American commander Joseph Stilwell and Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek of the Kuomintang Nationalist Chinese forces than in actually fighting the Japanese.The year is 1944 and the Japanese army is once again on the offensive and the Chinese are retreating deeper into their interior. Stewart heads an eight man army demolition team and he's destroying a whole lot of things useful to the advancing Japanese, scorching the Chinese earth for the invaders.But he's in a country that the only things Americans know about it come from missionary tales, Pearl Buck novels, and Charlie Chan movies. Which would make Stewart's character no different than most of the rest of his countrymen. One of the people in his team is the Chinese speaking Glenn Corbett who's studied the language and culture.In this war movie, we never see the Japanese. Stewart's big problems come from the mass of refugees heading west to escape the advancing Japanese. He's also dealing with conflicting orders, with Chinese commanders looking to evade responsibility, and some outright bandits who really don't care who wins the war.Four of the team are killed and the reprisals Stewart takes cost him the affection of Lisa Lu, widow of a Chinese general who chose wrong politically and paid for it. Actually the performance I liked best in the movie is that of Frank Silvera as a Chinese Kuomintang commander who actually does understand and sympathize with Stewart, but who also knows his people.My guess is that James Stewart took this film because it's not a typical war film with no great combat scenes. It's about the responsibility of command in a war where you can't tell whom you should fear.Still The Mountain Road drags in spots and comes to no real satisfactory conclusion. It's different, but because of that remains one of James Stewart's least known and viewed films.