Above is a scene from the 1963 grand-scale epic 55 Days at Peking, set during the Boxer Rebellion in China in 1900.
Press the top left play button on the above feature image to watch the 13-minute clip where the siege of the foreign legations begins.
Directed by Nicholas Ray, the movie stars Charlton Heston, Ava Gardner, and David Niven. It dramatizes the siege of the foreign legations in Peking (now Beijing), where an international force of soldiers and civilians, including Americans and Europeans, defended against the anti-foreigner Boxer rebels and the imperial forces of the Qing Dynasty.
The film follows U.S. Marine Major Matt Lewis (Heston), British envoy Sir Arthur Robertson (Niven), and Russian noblewoman Baroness Natalie Ivanoff (Gardner) as they navigate the brutal 55-day siege.
The film was shot in Spain and was one of the last major Hollywood epics of its kind but suffered from production troubles, including the director leaving before completion.
Produced by Samuel Bronston, who was known for financing films that featured vast sets and large casts, aiming to create visually stunning spectacles that could compete with historical epics like The Fall of the Roman Empire and El Cid.
Who Were the Boxers?
The Boxers were a secretive Chinese martial arts society known as the Yihequan or “Righteous and Harmonious Fists.” They emerged in the late 19th century as an anti-foreign, anti-Christian movement during a period of national crisis in China. The group consisted primarily of peasants, farmers, and unemployed laborers who were frustrated with foreign influence, economic hardships, and the spread of Christianity, which they saw as a threat to Chinese traditions.
The Boxers believed they had supernatural abilities, including invulnerability to bullets and the power to summon divine protection. They practiced traditional Chinese martial arts and spiritual rituals, reinforcing their belief in mystical strength.
The movement was also fueled by resentment toward foreign powers, who had carved out spheres of influence in China and imposed unequal treaties after the Opium Wars.
The Boxer movement gained momentum in the late 1890s, particularly in northern China. By 1900, their activities had escalated into full-scale violence, with Boxers attacking foreign settlements, destroying churches, and killing Christian converts.
The Qing Dynasty, led by Empress Dowager Cixi, initially wavered in its response but eventually supported the movement, seeing it as a tool to resist foreign domination.
In response, an alliance of eight foreign powers—including Britain, the United States, Germany, France, Japan, Russia, Italy, and Austria-Hungary—intervened to suppress the rebellion. Their forces invaded Beijing in August 1900, brutally crushing the Boxers and imposing severe consequences on China through the Boxer Protocol of 1901, which demanded heavy indemnities and further concessions to foreign powers.
Though the Boxers were ultimately defeated, their movement exposed the weakness of the Qing Dynasty, which would collapse a decade later in the 1911 Revolution.