In continuing its month of Chinese American cinema, Turner Classic Movies showed THE TOLL OF THE SEA tonight (which night highlighted some of the work of Anna May Wong. The Chinese-American actress was as big a star as Sessue Hayakawa was in the silent and early talkie periods, and certainly had much going for her: not only an ability to have the motion picture camera "love her" face and motions, but a sexiness that could easily be turned on. But she had problems finding leading parts, and usually had to accept better-than-average supporting roles (usually as a villainous - see the Sherlock Holmes film, A STUDY IN SCARLET with Reginald Owen for an example). Her best recalled role to most people is the young Chinese bride headed to the hinterland to meet her husband to be, who is the subject of the sexual desires of war lord Warner Oland in SHANGHAI EXPRESS. It was a good performance under a master director (Von Sternberg), and one of the few times Marlene Dietrich had competition from a female actress in one of Dietrich's films.
This role was Anna's break-out part. Written for the screen by Frances Marion, the fabled great woman's screenplay writer in the early film period, it was also the first full length color film using a new two color strip system. Anna plays Lotus Flower, a naive young lady who helps rescue a drowning man named Allan Carver (Kenneth Harlan). Carver, while recovering, finds himself falling for Lotus Flower and he woos her. Then he gets word from home that he has to return. So he shows that fatal weakness in character that the screenplay makes us expect: he's talked by friends into dropping Lotus by not talking her back to the U.S. with him. She has been hoping to go with him, but now has to beat back disappointment. Still she feels she can count on Allan, as they have gone through some type of ceremony of marriage in China (although it is one that Americans might not accept). So she expects Allan will return.
Years pass. Lotus was pregnant by Allan, and now has a four year old son (Priscilla "Baby" Moran plays the little boy). To him she keeps saying that one day his daddy will come home to them. But he doesn't. Then Allan shows up with his American (i.e. Caucasian) bride "Elsie" (Beatrice Bently). Lotus gives him up in a civilized manner, but then also gives up her son to be raised by Elsie and Allan. Then she commits suicide by throwing herself into the sea at the base of her garden.
The reader may believe this is a rip-off by Frances Marion of the play and later opera MADAME BUTTERFLY. All missing is the heroine blindfolding her son, putting an American flag in his hand, and committing hara-kiri (but Anna is playing a Chinese, not a Japanese). Also this is a silent film with no bars of Puccini in it. But they have the next best thing, complete with a suicide.
On the positive part the film has Wong acting with dignity and sweetness as a young girl who believes too much in romance and her lover's honor. She is constantly seen trying to keep her idea of his memory alive, despite the nay-sayers around her (personified by two catty gossips played by Etta Ling and Ming Young). She tries desperately to retain her optimism, and prays that her lover returns. But we are told that the sea is unforgiving, and for every instance of happiness it produces it demands repayment that is heavy and cruel. Like the sea waves it causes the person's euphoria to rise higher and higher, and then hit troughs pulling it lower and lower. Certainly the film keeps this idea in our mind. What will happen to our heroine and her son?
The film as we have it now only has about 90 to 90% of the original in it. The last five minutes were lost, and had to be re-shot with a similar two tone color strip film and camera. But we see from a design in one of the last dialog cards shows a picture of Lotus Flower in the water sinking (only her head is above water. So we know how it ends.
For all the similarity of the film to the opera, THE TOLL OF THE SEA is well photographed and Anna May Wong shows a nice chemistry with the motion film camera. The other actors are competent (the best being the two catty scolds who keep warning and laughing at Lotus Flower). Kenneth Harlan is not a bad actor but he oddly reminds me of Oscar Shaw, the Broadway "juvenile" star of the 1920s who played with Mary Eaton on Broadway, and appeared opposite the Marx Brothers in THE COCONUTS. The resemblance is quite odd. The actress who played his American wife was pleasant - nothing more. The little "boy" (Miss Moran) is enjoyably sweet as the child, and makes the slow torment Lotus Flower goes through all the worse to the audience.
But it is really Wong who makes the story work - she is fully aware that she is unfairly being pushed out of a relationship that she thought would last forever. Her youth makes it more poignant. In the end we can understand why her career would last as long as it did, and why she became America's first Chinese - American film star.
This role was Anna's break-out part. Written for the screen by Frances Marion, the fabled great woman's screenplay writer in the early film period, it was also the first full length color film using a new two color strip system. Anna plays Lotus Flower, a naive young lady who helps rescue a drowning man named Allan Carver (Kenneth Harlan). Carver, while recovering, finds himself falling for Lotus Flower and he woos her. Then he gets word from home that he has to return. So he shows that fatal weakness in character that the screenplay makes us expect: he's talked by friends into dropping Lotus by not talking her back to the U.S. with him. She has been hoping to go with him, but now has to beat back disappointment. Still she feels she can count on Allan, as they have gone through some type of ceremony of marriage in China (although it is one that Americans might not accept). So she expects Allan will return.
Years pass. Lotus was pregnant by Allan, and now has a four year old son (Priscilla "Baby" Moran plays the little boy). To him she keeps saying that one day his daddy will come home to them. But he doesn't. Then Allan shows up with his American (i.e. Caucasian) bride "Elsie" (Beatrice Bently). Lotus gives him up in a civilized manner, but then also gives up her son to be raised by Elsie and Allan. Then she commits suicide by throwing herself into the sea at the base of her garden.
The reader may believe this is a rip-off by Frances Marion of the play and later opera MADAME BUTTERFLY. All missing is the heroine blindfolding her son, putting an American flag in his hand, and committing hara-kiri (but Anna is playing a Chinese, not a Japanese). Also this is a silent film with no bars of Puccini in it. But they have the next best thing, complete with a suicide.
On the positive part the film has Wong acting with dignity and sweetness as a young girl who believes too much in romance and her lover's honor. She is constantly seen trying to keep her idea of his memory alive, despite the nay-sayers around her (personified by two catty gossips played by Etta Ling and Ming Young). She tries desperately to retain her optimism, and prays that her lover returns. But we are told that the sea is unforgiving, and for every instance of happiness it produces it demands repayment that is heavy and cruel. Like the sea waves it causes the person's euphoria to rise higher and higher, and then hit troughs pulling it lower and lower. Certainly the film keeps this idea in our mind. What will happen to our heroine and her son?
The film as we have it now only has about 90 to 90% of the original in it. The last five minutes were lost, and had to be re-shot with a similar two tone color strip film and camera. But we see from a design in one of the last dialog cards shows a picture of Lotus Flower in the water sinking (only her head is above water. So we know how it ends.
For all the similarity of the film to the opera, THE TOLL OF THE SEA is well photographed and Anna May Wong shows a nice chemistry with the motion film camera. The other actors are competent (the best being the two catty scolds who keep warning and laughing at Lotus Flower). Kenneth Harlan is not a bad actor but he oddly reminds me of Oscar Shaw, the Broadway "juvenile" star of the 1920s who played with Mary Eaton on Broadway, and appeared opposite the Marx Brothers in THE COCONUTS. The resemblance is quite odd. The actress who played his American wife was pleasant - nothing more. The little "boy" (Miss Moran) is enjoyably sweet as the child, and makes the slow torment Lotus Flower goes through all the worse to the audience.
But it is really Wong who makes the story work - she is fully aware that she is unfairly being pushed out of a relationship that she thought would last forever. Her youth makes it more poignant. In the end we can understand why her career would last as long as it did, and why she became America's first Chinese - American film star.