The Dragon Painter
Dir: William
Worthington
Prod: not listed
Scr: Richard Schayer,
from the novel by Mary McNeil Fenollosa
Phot: Frank D.
Williams
Premiere: September 28,
1919
53 min.
The Dragon Painter makes
an excellent companion piece to the previously reviewed Broken Blossoms, a vastly more popular film featuring an Asian
character made the same year. In sharp contrast to the “yellowface” performance
of Richard Barthelmess, Dragon Painter is
an attempt to create an alternative, non-stereotyped kind of cinema from an Asian-American
perspective.
This film was the product of the Haworth Pictures
Corporation, founded and funded by the first Japanese film star, Sessue
Hayakawa, who had achieved fame and fortune thanks to his performance in only
his second film, The Cheat (1915). He
was an international star, but could only find roles in mainstream films as a
suave villain or an exotic heartthrob, or both simultaneously. As a legitimate
actor, Hayakawa wanted to be treated like one. So he went ahead and took care
of it himself.
In March, 1918, Hayakawa formed the independent Haworth
Pictures Corporation. The Dragon Painter is
the ninth of 22 Haworth films that served as popular starring vehicles for him
over a span of five years. These productions were a relief for audiences who
wanted to see three-dimensional Asian characters conveying a full range of
adult emotions.
The Dragon Painter’s
story is set in a mythic, rural Japan (a pristine Yosemite Valley substitutes
for the real thing). Here, Hayakawa plays Tatsuo, a tortured artist. A
magnificent wielder of the brush, he believes that the divinity of the mountain
changed his love, a princess, into a dragon, 1,000 years ago, and that he is
doomed to include the dragon, unseen but ever-present, in all his paintings. He
is a classic rebel: a “wild man,” a truth-teller who has no truck with the
fancy and false ways of civilization.
Meanwhile, an older master Kano, who has no son, seeks a protégé
to pass his craft to, as well as a spouse for his daughter Ume-ko (Tsuru Aoki,
a fine actress and Hayakawa’s wife). Kano summons Tatsuo, telling him his
daughter is the princess he seeks. Tatsu and Ume-ko do fall in love, and Kano
takes him into the family.
Only — Tatsuo stops painting. “What use is it to paint you
now that I’ve found you?” he asks. “I destroyed the divine gift you possessed,”
she responds. In a Shakespearian move, she feigns suicide. His inspiration returns
— the intertitle proclaims that “sorrow gave back to Tatsuo the mystery that
love had taken”. In strong contrast to Hollywood’s typical overwrought ending,
Ume-ko simply reappears one day, and Tatsuo realizes that he must integrate art
and life. “Now that sorrow has returned your genius, and you have learned that
Love must be Art’s servant, I can take my place at your side again without
remorse,” she says, and the film ends with him working, her hand on his
shoulder. It’s a refreshingly mature outcome for any commercial film, no matter
what era.
Even in this attempt to get the cultural integrity “right,”
there are contradictions. The film story was taken form a novel written by
white American southern woman who was enamored of the East and who traveled
extensively there with her second and third husbands. Father figure Kano is
played by a Caucasian actor in yellowface, the prolific Edward Peil, Sr.
(ironically, he is the only actor to be in the casts of both this and Broken Blossoms). American audiences
praised it for its authenticity, but Japanese critics were quick to point out its
unconvincing flaws.
Still, it’s a well-acted, well-thought-out piece, complete
with magnificent outdoor cinematography from cameraman Frank D. Williams. The
pace is crisp, yet the movie takes pleasure in the landscapes Tatsuo tries to
capture.
Hayakawa’s life was a thrill ride from the word go. He had already
tried suicide after being disqualified from joining the Japanese Navy due to a
burst eardrum. He studied political economics at the University of Chicago,
where he was a star quarterback. He became an actor by chance; he later turned
to a career as an artist (fighting the Nazis in the French Resistance for a
time as well). He came back to acting long enough to win praise in The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957),
then became a Zen priest.
The NFR is one writer’s
attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in
chronological order. Next time: the Fuentes Family Home Movies Collection.
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