Review - Dinty

June 24, 2023
 
Dinty – U.S., 1920
 

Dinty is at its heart a love story – several actually. There’s the opening love shared by a young Irish man named Danny O’Sullivan (Tom Gallery) and the love of his life, Doreen (Colleen Moore). Their story resembles that of Romeo and Juliet, for early on we learn that their families are warring. In an early scene, we watch as they elope just one week before Danny sets off to make his fortune in America. This may seem like the set-up for a dramatic story involving separation and longing, of family conflicts brought on by the young woman’s rebellious nature, but alas no. In no time at all, Doreen is on an ocean liner destined for the sunny skies of San Francisco and her disgruntled father is nowhere to be seen.  
 
Okay. So the family drama does not materialize, but now that they’re both destined to be together again, we’ll surely have a serious tale detailing the experiences of Irish immigrants in the United States post-World War I and how love can help people cope with what history tells us were extremely challenging times. Regrettably, upon her arrival, Doreen learns that earlier that day her husband was struck down in an automobile accident.
 
Okay. So that love story was a ruse, but there’s still promise. It seems that Doreen brought with her a young baby named Dinty, and so, Doreen dedicates her heart and soul to providing for him, even taking him to work when he should be at home sleeping seeing as how she works late nights as a cleaning lady. In one scene, we see her scrubbing floors with a rope around her waist, Dinty being on the other end of the rope in a basket. No doubt theirs is a tough existence, and one could reasonable surmise that the film will become about how, for these two characters, life is a daily struggle. Will Doreen find love again? Will they suffer discrimination and hardship? Clearly, the storyline has promise, yet once again, the film can’t be tied down, and in just minutes, twelve years have passed.
 
And here is where audiences may find themselves wondering if they’ve been Rick-rolled, for just as a viewer of Beyonce’s latest video on YouTube may suddenly find themselves watching Astley swing his arms to his massive hit Never Gonna Give You Up, we are suddenly introduced to the drug-smuggling Triad leader Wong Tai (Noah Beery) and his far-too-young wife Half Moon, played by Anna May Wong. Their secret lair is straight out of early Bond film, replete with swinging pendulums, secret rooms, and walls that slide open with the push of a button. In an early scene, we watch as Wong Tai’s henchman evade capture and deliver his addictive product through the use of a sophisticated telegraph machine that can send messages in Chinese.
 
Just what this has to do with little Dinty (now played by Wesley Barry) and his ailing mother is anyone’s guess, but suddenly, Wong Tai vanishes from the film, and once again we are watching the adventure of Dinty, now selling newspapers on the street, and his attempts at dealing with the local newspaper-boy bully, Muggsy.
 
But back to the love angles. Soon we meet Ruth (Marjarie Daw), the young daughter of the powerful, tough as nails Judge Whitely, and her police officer boyfriend, John North (Pat O’Malley). Actually, the film does not play this relationship up until the final scene. What’s important is that it is the judge who has been tasked with bringing down drug smugglers, which puts him on a collision course with Wong Tai. I know what you are thinking: Just how does this involve Dinty?
 
The film was directed by John McDermott and Marshall Neilan, and while credit for the script is given exclusively to Neilan, I can imagine a scenario in which one of them wanted to make a serious movie about Irish immigrants and the other an adventure film with a Fu Manchu-like villain. It’s akin to the mash-up that occurred when Tarentino and Rodriguez decided to combine two disparate scripts - one about killers on the run and the other about vampires - and make From Dusk Till Dawn.  The two plots are incompatible, but at least the latter two directors had the good sense to exhaust one story before introducing the other. Here, a scene involving drug smuggling is followed by a young boy interviewing for a newspaper job by screaming so loud that glass breaks and birds fly off in fear.
 
The film scores some points by making Dinty’s best friends an African-American boy named Alexander Horatius Jones (Aaron Mitchell) and a boy of Chinese descent named Sui Lung (Walter Chung). Alas, while Sui Lung plays a big role in the film’s climax, Jones seems to be there solely for comic relief. Case in point, when Dinty and his friends scrap with Muggsy and his gang, Jones is the only one to hide in a trash can. Perhaps more troublesome is the film’s final shot, in which Jones finally gets something to eat after brooding at the judge’s dinner table. One guess what he is served.
 
At 63 minutes, Dinty does not have much time for character development, and yet it has some rather wonderful moments. In one, Dinty’s friends decide to form a band and play for Dinty’s bedridden mother. The instruments they play represent their culture, with Sui Lung playing a variation of the pipa, yet what makes the scene most memorable is that when a doctor arrives to check on Dinty’s mother, he is so moved by the boys’ actions that he joins them in dance. There are also moments when, seeing all he has done to make his mother comfortable, you marvel at Dinty’s ingenuity. If only the film were not so disjointed.
 
I primarily watched the film for Anna May Wong, having long been curious about her career and whether her films truly deserve their reputation. Here, she is not given much to do, but in a key moment toward the end, she has to register Half Moon’s conflicted feelings about having been betrayed and yet not fully trusting the authority figures standing in front of her. Even at the young age of 15, she was able to act such moments, and I’m convinced that Ms. Wong was a good actress overall, but a truly outstanding silent film actress. I wouldn’t say the movie is worth watching for her performance alone – its script is far too problematic - but if you decide to give it a chance, it would likely be one part you could reflect back fondly upon. The role of Sui Lung would be the other. As for the rest, it’s fun, eye-roll inducing, and memorable for both the right and wrong reasons. (on DVD and Blu-ray from Grapevine Video)
 
3 stars  
 
*Dinty is a silent film.
*Dinty was consider lost until a Dutch print was found. If you pause the film at the right time, you can still see the Dutch intertitles.
*Walter Chung appears to have only appeared in one other film, 1925’s When the Door Opened. He passed away at the age of 70 in 1981.