Review - Dragon Seed

 January 28, 2022
 
Dragon Seed – U.S., 1944
 

Let’s be honest. There was absolutely no possibility that Harold C. Bacquet and Jack Conway’s 1944 film Dragon Seed was ever going to have a more authentic cast. World War II was in its third year, the Japanese Internment Camps were in operation, and there was a belief that audiences simply would not go to see a movie starring Asian-American actors and actresses. We’ll never know if this was accurate. However, we do know that there was an interest in films about Asian characters. Seven years earlier, The Good Earth had won awards, and in the years that followed, audiences would flock to films such as Sayonara, Love Is a Many Splendid Thing, the Charlie Chan movies, China Doll and a bit later the films of Bruce Lee. Many of these films even had Asian and Asian-American actresses in lead and supporting roles. So, there has been some progress at least.
 
However, in 1944, what we were likely to get was a film about Asians that starred Caucasians or “exotic-looking” actors and actresses, and that is what we get in Dragon Seed. Make no mistake about it - the film has an impressive cast. In the lead roles, we have Walter Huston (Caucasian Canadian), Aline MacMahon (Scottish-Irish and Russian-Jewish), and Katherine Hepburn (Caucasian American). The supporting roles are played by Akim Tamiroff (Armenian) and Turhan Bey (Turkish and Czechoslovakian-Jewish), as well as Hurd Hatfield, Agnes Moorehead, Frances Rafferty, and Jacqueline deWit. All in all, a pretty inauthentic cast, if you ask me.
 
And yet, here’s the thing. If you can look past the fact that few members of the cast look or sound the part (some even resort to slowing down their speech to sound “Chinese”) and instead focus on what the characters are actually saying and doing, I think you’ll be in for a surprise. It turns out that Dragon Seed is a pretty gripping film.
 
Like many great American films, Dragon Seed is about a family dealing with changing times. The film is set in 1937, and this is significant, for it means that the family’s four children – 3 boys and a girl – were likely born in the aftermath of the Chinese Revolution of 1911. This is significant because revolutions tend to bring about both social change, as well as changes in the mindset of youngsters, especially women. This is certainly evidence in the film. In addition, 1937 brings the looming threat of a Japanese invasion.  
 
At the heart of the film are Ling Tan (Huston) and his wife (MacMahon), and one of the beautiful aspects of the film is their relationship. While we are never told whether theirs was an arranged marriage (I suspect it was), we quickly see that there is a deep connection between them. In an early scene, Ling Tan is working in the field when his wife calls his name. He utters something about not listening to women until after sundown, yet soon drops what he is doing and goes to her. After explaining that she is worried about his health, she suggests that he help her pluck some chickens instead. With a mixture of frustration and playfulness, he responds, “That is woman’s work,” but then assist her anyway. And there, in a nutshell, is their relationship – still rooted in old-fashioned beliefs about the roles of men and women, but also caring and tender. Throughout the film, they talk to each other truthfully and with their hearts, and one of them usually ends up in the other’s arms.
 
They own a sizable farm, which they run with the help of their three sons and one of their daughters-in-law. I say one because the other, Jade (Hepburn), always seems to be absent and distant emotionally. In one scene, her husband, Lao Er (Bey) describes her as “mine, and yet… not mine,” and her non-conformity to traditional norms is viewed as something hideous that must be stamped out. To this end, the family offers some rather telling solutions. Make her wait, one brother says. Another member advises what can only be described as physical violence, and while this advice is never acted upon, the suggestion is nevertheless alarming. So too are several other comments in which domestic violence is presented as both a kind of necessary evil.
 
One day, Lao Er cannot find Jade, so he goes to center of town, half expecting to find her in the arms of the man she could have married. Instead, she is listening to a speech detailing the need to stand up to Japanese aggression. It is a call to arms that only she appears willing to answer. In a later scene, her father-in-law insists there’s no need for alarm. Peace, he reasons, has always been present in the land, and it will continue to reign. If only history had heeded his words.
 
The movie follows these two parallel tracks – modernity on the one hand and war on the other. Scenes in which Lao Er and Jade seek to further develop their relationship are followed by ones in which the war intrudes. For example, in one rather sweet scene, Jade expresses her desire for a book, and Lao Er, though unsure he can truly be progressive, readily agrees to get one for her. Soon afterwards, we witness Lao Er’s uncle’s shop being looted and his products thrown into a raging bonfire. His crime: selling Japanese goods. These two storylines eventually converge in a scene that starts with Jade announcing her pregnancy moments before Japanese planes appear in the sky and start dropping bombs. The war has come, and with it undeniable cruelty.
 
The question Dragon Seed ultimately asks is whether goodness can survive such adversity, whether we can preserve our values and hopes while witnessing a string of shocking atrocities. The answer comes in the form of a patriotic and slightly propagandist monologue that is simultaneously inspiring and naïve. It is delivered by Jade and reflects the long-held hope that war can be so horrifying that it snaps society out of its propensity to hate and brutalize those we either fear or loathe for having the audacity to be different from us. If only we defeat this enemy or that enemy, then all will be right again. It is a lie we tell ourselves to preserve our own sanity, for believing otherwise would mean accepting the unacceptable.
 
Dragon Seed was written by Pearl S. Buck, and unlike The Good Earth, it is completely fictional. Buck left China in 1934 and appears not to have returned. I suspect that her books are not very well read these days, but they were incredibly influential at the time, introducing Western audiences to sympathetic Chinese characters and demonstrating that they weren’t all that different from themselves. This translated into increased public support for China during the war and likely led to more understanding of the Chinese-American community, as well as refugees from China, some of whom eventually settled in the United States. The movie adaptations of The Good Earth and Dragon Seed can only have contributed to this development.
 
These days, the film is viewed as “problematic” due to its cast, its references to abuse, and its rather one-note Japanese characters. This is a shame, for this is not Breakfast at Tiffany’s or Sixteen Candles, movies whose Asian-American characters were created solely for the purpose of being comic fodder. This is a serious, sweet, and tragic film about a horrendous time in history. Its characters are complex with each having a realistic arc and each committing believable actions. Jade and Lao Er’s romance rings true despite the studio’s apparent unwillingness to allow their characters’ lips to actually touch, and there is both a bond and a complexity to each of the other relationships. These indeed were times that tested men’s souls, and Dragon Seed doesn’t shy away from that. I can only hope that we don’t shy away from films like Dragon Seed simply because of what we wish they had been. (on DVD)
 
4 stars

Review - Dodsworth

May 29, 2021
 
Dodsworth – U.S., 1936
 

William Wyler’s Dodsworth has a moment of absolutely beautiful resolution, and if the movie gods had had their way, it would have been the film’s final impression, a poignant reminder of one of life’s bitter truths about “normalcy” and its vastly different effect of men and women. The problem – for Warner Bros. most likely – is that it’s a downer, and so, instead of cutting to the ending credits, there’s a fade in and the narrative continues in search of happier circumstances regardless of the inconsistencies and sheer coincidences that have to occur for those merrier trails to emerge. Had these impulses been suppressed and audience trusted not to revolt at the notion that not every hero and heroine rides into the sunset, Dodsworth would have been a masterpiece. As it is, it’s damaged goods.
 
The film’s central characters are Sam Dodsworth (Walter Huston) and his wife, Fran (Ruth Chatterton). In the opening scene, we see Sam standing at a massive window that overlooks the automobile plant that he has run for the past twenty years. The camera then pans to a newspaper, the headline of which announces the sale of the plant. As he walks to his car for the last time, some of the men he employed stop to shake his hand, thank him, and wish him well. And then he is off. The factory continues to churn behind him, but in a moment of poetic foreshadowing, Sam does not look back. He is simply not that kind of man.
 
So, what’s next for Sam? Why, travel, of course, that hobby that so many people put off due to insufficient finances, commitment to their jobs, and the overwhelming responsibilities of child-rearing. Their destination is Europe, and the plan is to spend six months country-hopping. Thus, you’d expect them both to be excited and jovial, yet the night before their departure, there’s a telling exchange. Sam speaks about the opportunity his company and its success has provided them; in her response, Fran hints at an entirely different consequence – long days spent either alone or raising their daughter, evenings spent entertaining her husband’s co-workers and industry bigwigs, hours spent in the role of host to people she hardly knew. In other words, his success meant her confinement. One can only assume, then, that to her the vacation represents her release.
 
The exact ages of the Dodsworths are unclear. Huston was 49 in 1936, Chatterton 44, and these ages seem appropriate for their characters. They have an adult daughter who has recently married, indicating that they had a child early on in Sam’s career, a fact that would have restricted Fran’s life considerably. However, early in the film there’s reference to the age of 35, a number that is problematic when it comes to marriage and motherhood. However, it also helps explain the importance Fran places on social activities and the attention of male suitors. It could also mean that Sam was the first person she dated, and I think most people would agree that the life you think you’ll be content with at 15 is not always the life you want twenty years later.
 
And this is essentially the message of Dodsworth, that two people can grow apart and not even be aware of it. In Sam, we see the experience of many men, for having both a successful career and a family can indeed breed overconfidence and complacency. After all, everything can seem fine when your career is going well. Perhaps this is why Sam is surprised when his wife does not share his enthusiasm upon seeing the beacon of a lighthouse from the upper deck of the ship and when she insists that they put on their best attire even when on vacation. In one key exchange, a passenger on the ship named Edith Cortright (Mary Astor) tells Sam, “One drifts for lack of a reason to do anything else,” and while she is talking about her habit of traveling, the sentiment helps explain Fran. For twenty years, she’s been drifting.
 
Mrs. Cortright is a central reason why the film’s final act seems so superficial. After meeting the Dodsworths at sea early in the film, her most poignant moment comes when she recognizes something in Fran that gives her pause. She then delivers to her a message that is is brief and powerful: “Don’t.” And then she is gone, and that is where she should have stayed, for then she would have been a harbinger of things to come, someone who recognized the path Fran was on and tried in vain to steer her to safer waters. Instead, she becomes just another minor female character who conveniently brings “joy and purpose” to a much older man in far too little time for those sentiments to convincingly be the result of true love. Alas, that’s what Hollywood thinks audiences want, and in the end, it is what brings down a masterpiece. (on DVD and Blu-ray)
 
3 and a half stars

Review - Abraham Lincoln

April 20, 2017

Abraham Lincoln – U.S., 1930

Just fifteen years after touching off a firestorm with The Birth of a Nation, D.W. Griffith returned to the Civil War with his “biographical” film Abraham Lincoln. Beginning in 1809 and concluding in 1965, the film could perhaps best be describe as history told by a historian with ADHD, for the film simply never slows down enough to develop any of its story lines. The result of this is a film that resembles someone’s version of a greatest hits collection, a cliff notes version of a great man’s life that simple doesn’t do him or the men and women he interacted with justice.

There are interesting moments of course. (It may be impossible to make a film about Lincoln without at least a few of them.) The film’s opening scene, in which we see the interior of a slave ship and the heartlessness of its crew, effectively reminds viewers of the horrendous institution that was at the heart of the conflict that was to come. Another early scene allows viewers to see the soft side of Lincoln. In the scene, Lincoln (Walter Huston) flirts openly with a young woman named Ann (Una Merkel) and seems to be working his way to a proposal. This scene is followed almost immediately by a heartbreaking deathbed scene after a powerful sickness sweeps through Illinois. Had the movie just focused on this period of time and on that relationship, I would have likely found it absolutely enthralling, for theirs is a story that is not well known and, from what we do see of it, rather poignant.

There’s also a later scene in which Lincoln meets with Ulysses S. Grant that is quite humorous and another in which he and Grant discuss what is to become of the leaders of the Confederacy. Grant – and oddly enough Stephen A. Douglas - is played by E. Alyn Warren, and he and Huston have impeccable timing. Alas, the two characters have too few scenes together, and this feels like a missed opportunity.

All too often the film is on Michael-Bay-like overdrive. Want to know what kind of debater Lincoln was? Too bad. Griffith reduces his debate with Douglas to a series of one-liner sound bites, none of which shed light on what made Lincoln such an effective speaker. Want to understand what drew Lincoln to his wife Mary (Kay Hammond) or understand their relationship better? Good luck. Here, Mary is presented as individualistic, bombastic, nagging, opportunistic, and, ever so often, gentle. In other words, instead of being a fully realized character, she’s whatever the movie needs her to be, and by the end of the film, I was no closer to understanding her than I was when the film began. And then there the film’s surreal mystical element. Lincoln is portrayed as being haunted by prophetic dreams – one that suggests that he isn’t long for the world. It is a distraction.

In Birth of a Nation and America, Griffith’s portrayal of Lincoln was problematic. In the latter film, Lincoln is depicted as a man who sits by himself moping and worrying about the war instead of being actively involved in it. Here, Griffith takes a different, more respectful approach. Lincoln is portrayed as bold, matures into a man of the people, and ultimately decides the buck stops with him. We witness him sitting in the command room awaiting the latest news from the battlefield. And while Lincoln may be a little repetitive – his favorite expression seems to be that the Union must be preserved – at least he repeats a message with sentiments that the real Lincoln wholeheartedly endorsed. This does not mean that there aren’t scenes in which Griffith films Lincoln starring off into space or saying ridiculous things like “I know how I can win the war! Grant!” but at least there are fewer of them.

It feels somewhat sacrilegious to dislike a film about Abraham Lincoln, at least one that does not have the phrase Vampire Hunter attached to it, yet there is no getting around the film’s utter messiness and lack of focus. Its most interesting moments are mostly in the first half, for these are moments not often found in history books or documentaries. The problem is that just as these moments begin to draw you in, the camera fades out, and when they fade back in, the action has moved so far ahead in time as to immediately render your earlier commitment a waste of empathy. When the film finally slows down, it is to focus on Lincoln’s actions during the Civil War, a topic Griffith had already covered in earlier films - and done much more effectively.

Abraham Lincoln is a reminder that the great ones occasionally miss the mark. Griffith just never finds his footing here. While his touch is felt in early scenes, the script works against him, never allowing him to focus his camera and truly use it to its full potential. He gets decent performances from his cast, in particular from Huston and Merkel; however, the film’s best moments do not lead anywhere worthwhile, and what does work is neither original nor unexpected. Just where is it written that a movie about Lincoln has to end with his death? What’s wrong with giving him his moment in the sun, with ending with a long shot of him taking in a moment of pride and then getting back to work? (on DVD)

2 and a half stars