Priscilla Dean wants to get out of China, so she agrees to go to a small village with Wallace Beery and smuggle out some opium. Matt Moore is present, supposedly to reopen the local mine, but really to crack down singlehandedly on the opium trade. And everyone knows it.
There are several things about the movie I don't care for, among them the sense-free title, and Bruce Guerin as the little kid who rushes in during the final battle, seemingly expressly to stop Miss Dean from destroying the opium and to strangle her while she is trying to shoot murderous opium dealers who are trying to burn the building she has taken refuge in, and to shoot her. In fact, the movie looks to have been chopped down somewhere along the way; while the opening sequence in Shanghai is well paced, the village sequence seems to lose most of its cohesion.
Still, there are pleasures in this example of Tod Browning directing Miss Dean as a shady lady. There's Wallace Beery in his villainous phase; there's J. Farrell McDonald as a drunken Irishman, making fun of the toupee he wears; and 18-year-old Anna May Wong gives a performance that seems sedate most of the time, but reveals passion.
The excellence of the print made it clear why they used to tint and tone so much in the silent era: it makes the scenes pop out, like the red in the battle-and-fire scenes, and the green in the night scenes; apparently there were other choices than blue to show the world was dark.
For a major production, this one has not aged particularly well, with its yellowface performers, and characters, like Master Guerin's parents, who simply disappear from the film. Still, it has its pleasures.
There are several things about the movie I don't care for, among them the sense-free title, and Bruce Guerin as the little kid who rushes in during the final battle, seemingly expressly to stop Miss Dean from destroying the opium and to strangle her while she is trying to shoot murderous opium dealers who are trying to burn the building she has taken refuge in, and to shoot her. In fact, the movie looks to have been chopped down somewhere along the way; while the opening sequence in Shanghai is well paced, the village sequence seems to lose most of its cohesion.
Still, there are pleasures in this example of Tod Browning directing Miss Dean as a shady lady. There's Wallace Beery in his villainous phase; there's J. Farrell McDonald as a drunken Irishman, making fun of the toupee he wears; and 18-year-old Anna May Wong gives a performance that seems sedate most of the time, but reveals passion.
The excellence of the print made it clear why they used to tint and tone so much in the silent era: it makes the scenes pop out, like the red in the battle-and-fire scenes, and the green in the night scenes; apparently there were other choices than blue to show the world was dark.
For a major production, this one has not aged particularly well, with its yellowface performers, and characters, like Master Guerin's parents, who simply disappear from the film. Still, it has its pleasures.