User Reviews

Up until I saw this movie, I thought that THE BLACK PIRATE (with Douglas Fairbanks) was the first color film entirely shot using the two-color Technicolor process. However, this pirate film debuted four years after THE TOLL OF THE SEA, so the dust jacket from the Kino version of THE BLACK PIRATE was mistaken by proclaiming it the first. This might be because up until quite recently, THE TOLL OF THE SEA was thought to be lost. However, a print was recently found and restored with all but the last couple minutes available for viewing on The Treasures of the American Film Archives DVD series.

Being a two-color process film, the color seems very archaic. That's because unlike true color film, the two-color process involves special cameras with overlapping strips of film--one orange-red and the other green-blue. As a result, the print tends to look too orangy-green and colors like yellows and true blues and reds are non-existent. Probably the best example of the use of this process is in the small color segment of PHANTOM OF THE OPERA (1925), as they somehow DID get a nearly perfect red for the Phantom's costume at the ball. It's a gorgeous scene and if you are a nut about early films (like me), then it's imperative you see this restored print as well as THE TOLL OF THE SEA.

TOLL OF THE SEA is actually a pretty good film--even viewed today. What I especially like is that the film has a wonderful message about race and features honest-to-goodness Chinese actors and actresses in the film. In the 30s and 40s, Asians rarely every played leads (like Anna May Wong did in this movie). Think about it--Sidney Toler, Boris Karloff, Peter Lorre, Paul Muni and even Katherine Hepburn played leads in films about Asians or Asian-Americans only a decade or two after this film!!!!!

Ms. Wong plays a nice lady who finds a sailor washed up on the shore. She nurses him back to health and they fall in love. He later goes back to his country and vows to return to get her. However, time passes and she is left waiting,...along with the little bastard she bore this unworthy jerk. So far, I really liked the film. However, when the guy returns some time later with his White wife, the film has a less than perfect conclusion--at least for me. I won't say anything more, but the film was pretty sad and left me feeling a bit down when it was finished.

Overall, a very good film that is worth seeing for all fans of early cinema.

Yes, this is a beautiful and beautifully shot film, worth celebrating both for its two-strip Technicolor process and the presence of Anna May Wong, but let's not overlook poor old Kenneth Harlan as cad Allen Carver. Carver is the white man who marries poor little Lotus Flower (Wong), gets her pregnant, and then dumps her as soon as two of his 'friends' convince him a white man can't be married to an Asian woman. Carver rolls over with ridiculous ease and flees to America, where he commits bigamy by wedding saintly Barbara (Beatrice Bentley). The two return to China, where Lotus Flower and baby Allen Junior (Priscilla Moran, still alive as I write this and perhaps the repository of some good Hollywood stories) have been waiting for pops to return. Tragedy ensues, but not before Harlan conveys the impression that Carver is the most abject, miserable, no good heel ever to walk the Earth. The man has a million ways to look morose and consumed by guilt, but he just can't bring himself to do the right thing. It's not a subtle performance, but it is a memorable one!

I am not usually into silent movies, but there was nothing else on television that day. Let me say this: if this movie happened during this time, it would have had a much different perspective on the story. Lotus Flower would still have cried over her husband leaving, but she would have been a lot more angry at him when he returned and wouldn't have given her son up (at least, I wouldn't).

Even if I had seen the movie back in 1922 I wouldn't have liked the ending at all. The movie was awesome until the ending, that's the only place I have a problem with. I wish Lotus Flower didn't give her little boy up.

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.

Anna May Wong is a young woman named Lotus Flower, in China who helps rescue a white man lost at sea. She subsequently falls in love with him and they are married. However, after being reunited with his fellow Caucasians that man decides to go home to the United States and marries his old sweetheart. Lotus Flower never gives up the idea that her man will come back for her and tells her young son (the man's child) that his father will come for him. When he does, it is with his new wife and Lotus Flower is ashamed and devastated. She tells her son she is not his mother, but a Chinese nurse, and gives her son to the man and his new wife and commits suicide.

A story of such profound tragedy, this is the only film I have seen from this silent era that compares to the innocent tragedy of Murnau's Tabu. Anna May Wong gives incredible depth to this traditional woman who sacrifices her entire life for the happiness of her son and the man she loves. Her innocence is heartbreaking. Her loyalty unmatched. In today's world this can easily be viewed as rather racist towards Chinese – first because the white man chooses a "normal" life with a white woman, and second because her character behaves so inferiorly to him. This is likewise, anti-feminist. While these would seem troublesome today, it does not take away at all from the power that this story emotes.

The photography is simple and quite unique in its two-color (red and green) Technicolor. The shots of the flowers, the sea and of the beautiful Anna May Wong emote the simple charms of life in a simpler time. Her loyalty and love for him make him seem proportionately ungrateful and downright cruel. You spend every moment watching him wishing she'd lay a guilt-trip on him, but she never does. By the end of the film you pretty much want to kill this guy - one of the most obnoxious losers in cinema history. As a result, Lotus Flower's hope and sadness, mocked by local gossipers, gives her unequaled sympathy from the audience. Ultimately, this film succeeds because it offers no fluff to its story. The storytelling is classic and direct and lacks even a single gimmick. It has no unnecessary subplots to take away our focus and comes purely from the heart.

I cannot say enough about Wong's performance. She gets every note right about how a naive young girl clings to hope and lets herself be broken over love. She was really an exceptional actress and this performance makes it sadder that Hollywood was racist towards her in not giving her lead roles like this. I just saw her in a small supporting role in "Mr. Wu" in which Renee Adoree was given the Chinese female lead over Wong. Adoree wasn't a bad actress, but viewing it today, it screams for Anna May to be in the lead, despite its' racist plot line.

Regardless, Anna May Wong really was a ground-breaker for Asians and all non-whites in this early time period in Hollywood. Even today, few Asian woman are given such lead roles. She excelled in her opportunity. This 1922 film that runs just under an hour shows how basic, simple emotions need little screen time to evoke the same emotions from an audience.

I just finished watching "The Toll of the Sea" for the first time. What a beautiful and moving film! Anna May Wong was perfect in her "Butterfly "role as Lotus Flower. She was so beautiful and had such wonderful expressiveness in her face, eyes, movements, gestures. It was a performance that mesmerised me, that touched me profoundly. And she was only a teenager when she made that film! In the end, the other characters are really only supporting props for her portrayal of a deeply wounded and utterly sacrificial love for a shallow husband and sweet child. The supporting actors do their jobs effectively but it is Lotus Blossom we care for most. To think that this gem was thought lost!

This is the first time I've seen an entire silent film using The two-strip Technicolor technique. I've only seen clips from "The Black Pirate", the sequences in "Ben Hur" and the Exodus episode from "The Ten Commandments". I found its use in "The Toll of the Sea" very effective, particularly in conveying an ambiance of the exotic in the film and adding lustre and richness to the settings. I haven't thought too much about the personal emotional impact it may have on the viewer. When I watch the film again I'll try to analyse this factor.

The piano score has a very nice delicacy which underlines the feelings and reactions of the various characters. I thought it quite sensitive and telling.

An utterly beautiful film!