Anyone who's seen Know
Your Enemy: Japan
will have a hard time reconciling the Hollywood propaganda machine's vision of
the Japanese as inherently warlike and inscrutable with the version of Japanese
culture presented in William Worthington's 1919 silent film The Dragon
Painter,
produced just a few decades earlier. Worthington, with his star and producing
partner Sessue Hayakawa, made more than 20 Asian-themed films in Hollywood in
the silent era, each evoking the mood and style of Japanese culture. Their
films' emphasis on natural beauty and ancient folklore was fairly unique for
the '10s, but what's even more remarkable is that Hayakawa had the box-office
clout to get them made. Like his contemporary Anna May Wong, Hayakawa was a
millionaire movie star, wildly popular in his day, but now largely forgotten
because his films have been hard to find.
Recently discovered in
France and restored by The George Eastman House, The Dragon Painter is by all accounts
typical of the Worthington/Hayakawa collaborations. Hayakawa plays a village
eccentric who gains a reputation as a great but undisciplined artist, and is
invited by a traveling surveyor to study with a master. Then Hayakawa falls in
love with the master's daughter, and loses the fire in his belly that drove him
to paint in the first place. Though hauntingly beautiful—thanks in large
part to a newly commissioned score by Mark Izu—at just under an hour, The
Dragon Painter
is too spare and short to be much more than a quaint fable. Still, Hayakawa is
never less than magnetic, whether he's sketching by a waterfall or mingling
awkwardly in society circles. He was a silent actor with rare presence,
commanding the screen with stillness rather than broad gestures. It's hard to
believe that so much of his cinematic legacy has been lost, but that's what
time—and the shifting winds of nationalism—will do.
Key features: The complete 1914 feature The Wrath Of
The Gods
(directed by Reginald Barker, starring Hayakawa), a Fatty Arbuckle short
guest-starring Hayakawa, and a wealth of text materials accessible via DVD-ROM.