Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-4rdrl Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-27T05:00:05.833Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Episode 24 - “The Road to Mandalay”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 January 2024

Get access

Summary

EP24 spends little time “at sea,” and the US Navy is barely present. As a result, this episode helps round out Victory's worldwide coverage, as had EP10's South Atlantic footage. Bennett was challenged here to craft music for EP24's various Asian locales, plus a fine extended concert march in Part Three. The eighteen-day recording-to-airdate interval (1–19 April 1953) matched EP23 as the series’ shortest, but there are few Bennett re-uses, with almost all the music newly scored.

EP24's settings are nearly all Asian: China, Siam (now Thailand), Burma (Myanmar), India, and the Indian Ocean; the never-reprised opening music [A] sets the stage. Chronologically, this installment reaches back as far as any in Victory, to the late 1920s and the now-discredited “Tanaka Memorial” document. EP24 then quickly moves at 1:31 [B] to Japan's 1937 offensives in Shanghai, Nanking (Nanjing), and Hankow (Hankou), with J-5a at 1:55 and then two summary gunshot executions at 2:11, footage widely shown in prewar Western newsreels: “The Japanese slash at the vast, unyielding body of China. China bleeds from a thousand wounds, but her 500 million people will not be subdued.” China's longtime leader Chiang Kai-Shek and other military leaders meet at 2:20 [C], and millions of uprooted Chinese migrate west and south to Chungking (Chongqing), destroying anything in their path of possible value to the invading Japanese army.

A memorable vignette at 3:19 shows Chinese refugees struggling to bring a sizable boat along with them as they flee inland. Perhaps a hundred men and women are yoked together in elaborate harness, and they struggle along their mountainside path to pull the vessel upstream—and seriously uphill—through human effort alone. At 3:43 are more of the endless lines of refugees [D], and then at 4:12 [E] an overflowing train taking the uprooted Chinese to Chungking.

The animation-map at 4:45 illustrates China's sole lifeline, originating at the Burmese port of Rangoon (Yangon). Supplies were moved north by truck or rail to Mandalay and then Lashio, after which the Burma Road, completed in 1938, allowed passage to Chungking. Victory's viewers now hear the two most-used Bennett melodies in EP24: [F] at 4:46, symbolizing the Burma and Ledo Roads (= “ROAD”), and [G] at 5:08, which will reappear at 18:25 to begin the third strain (= “TRIO”) of Part Three's expansive concert march.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Music for Victory at Sea
Richard Rodgers, Robert Russell Bennett, and the Making of a TV Masterpiece
, pp. 321 - 330
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Print publication year: 2023

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×