The Inn of the Sixth Happiness

Directed by Mark Robson (1958)

This is one of our family’s favorite films, one full of humor, but showing forth the heroism and the true Christian witness of a missionary woman, Gladys Aylward (Ingrid Bergman, radiant as always), who goes to China, far in the interior, where people are poor and know little about the outside world, to tell them the story of Jesus, and also to show them — without any fuss or self-regard — what a Christian life is like.
It is based on a true story, on the real life of Gladys Aylward, who wrote about her life in China in the book The Small Woman (1957). The screen writers added one bit of spice to her life, giving her a love interest, a half-Chinese captain, Lin Nan (Curt Jurgens), who is sent by the nationalist government to unite the far-flung outlying regions of that vast country, and to prepare them for the Japanese invasion which draws near — for these are the years just before the second World War. But the real heart of the movie is in the friendship, full of respect a…