Pordenone Diary - Day 3

Sessuye Hayakawa
in Where Lights are Low

Pordenone Diary - Day 3 

Today was crammed full of activity in Pordenone masterclasses and book discussions along with the featured film of the day. My time today is limited because I stupidly did not opt to take come time off work during the week.

The first program today was master musician Donald Sosin giving a masterclass on scoring for silent films, which I am only part of the way through. I will be watching more of it once I get this blog post up.

Second is a discussion with Steve Massa about his book Rediscovering Roscoe The Films of  Fatty Arbuckle and Te3rry Chester Shulman on his book The First Family, Maurice Costello and Dolores/Helene Costello.

The main feature and short was preceded (as all programs have been) a short introductory film on the archive which supplied (and restored) the print we're seeing. Where Lights are Low was preserved and restored by the National Film Archive of Japan. I was utterly charmed by their filmed intro, educational and it made me want to go to Tokyo to visit. I mean, come on, who doesn't want to go and pose with a life sized cutout of the first Japanese film star Onoe Matsunosuke as does here with the curator Mika Tomita? I do! I was also charmed by the staff all saying see you in Pordenone next year and crying out arrivadercci as they waved. Made me teary.

So our first film was a short Toodles, Tom and Trouble (Thanhouser 1915) in which Tom is forced to watch over his little infant child while Mom goes out to shop with her girlfriends. Tom goes to the park with baby in tow and is immediately distracted by a friend who lures him over for a chat and a smoke. He sets baby down and soon the trouble starts. First a man comes up and seeing the baby unattended picks her up and seeks to find to whom she belongs. A little girl nearby who is annoyed having to stick close by her nanny walks over and sits off by herself with her doll. The nanny calls her back, she leaves the doll. An inquisitive dog thinking the baby is a toy makes off with it and proceeds on an adventure. Tom, meanwhile, has finished his smoke and chat and finds to his horror the baby is gone. He sees the dog and makes on his was a chase, but it is not a merry one. After several near misses the accident he fears happens and the baby is smashed. Poor Tom, distraught makes his way back to the park to find the girl looking for her doll and the stranger still hunting for the baby's home. He is overjoyed to find the baby alive and well and pays the little girl to go buy herself a new doll. All is well, the dog survived, too.

Good Samaritan, is this your baby?

The main feature of the day is a When Lights are Low (1921) film starring Sessuye Hayakawa as a Chinese Prince Tsu Wong in love with a common girl, Quan Yin (Gloria Payton) daughter of the gardener. He is betrothed long since to another royal. T'su Wong goes off to America to college and learns to enjoy western lifestyle. His Uncle arrives at his graduation as a surprise.While on a post-graduation tour of the shady areas of Chinatown, he finds that his beloved had been shanghaied and sold into prostitution/white slavery. He attempts to buy her, bidding against a gangster and shakedown artist Chang Bong Lo (Togo Yamamoto) in the district. His Uncle disowns him when he asks for the money to pay for her freedom. Instead he places a down payment and makes a deal with the salver that he has three years to come up with all the money, $10,000. What Quan Yin does for those years locked up is anyone's guess.

Togo Yamamoto as the very bad guy

 

Tsu Wong goes to work doing dishes in a restaurant. A job for which he is wholly unsuited. Eventually, he opens a shop in Chinatown and slowly tries to earn the money to buy Quan Yin's freedom. His friend suggests he play the lottery, all in, and he wins enough money to free Quan Yin. Unfortunately, the slaver has been threatened by Chang Bong Lo if he sells the girl. He hides her away from Tsu Wong. 

His heart is in the right place, but
Tsu Wong is the most inept dish washer ever.

 

Feeling like all is lost, he goes home and sulks. His friend Lang See Bow goes to the apartment of Chang Bong Lo with the intention of killing him, he himself is sacrificed and one of his servants brings a basket with a bloody knife (and we assume his friend's severed head). Spurred to action for revenge, Tso Wong seeks out his prey and engages in a violent fight to save his lady love and seek revenge for his friend's life. The fight is brutal and the villain escapes, but so does Tsu Wong and Quan Yin. 

The fight scenes are very physical and exciting

 

The pair are to be married and board a steamer back to China. Before hand, however, Tsu Wong is stalked by Chang Bong Lo to a telephone booth. The villain draws a knife and we fade out. Tsu Wong's friend that is seeing the pari ff goes out to find him, and finds the telephone booth with the door open, a pool of blood and Chang Bong Los's cold dead hand. The pair then sail off, one presumes, to happiness in China.

Stalking along the Embarcadero

Both films were accompanied by Dr. Philip Carli who did a magnificent job. As with all the scoring, it's pre-recorded, but still so exciting. In this film especially the big climatic fight scene, I was on the edge of my seat the entire time. 

Now like so many films of the silent (and talkie) era. Asian races were mostly played as one size fits all. This was not the first time that Japanese actor Sessuye Hayakawa played a Chinese (or Burmese). The villain of the piece was also a Japanese playing Chinese. And the poor Chinese slave girl, played by a Caucasian. What a mess! Even the sets were a mess, for the sequence set in China, the Bernheimer Estate was substituted as the Chinese palace. 

Bernheimer Estate or China?

 

Are we surprised that they'd think nothing of interchanging Japanese style architecture for China? Who'd notice, right? The Chinatown was on the backlot, certainly not shot in San Francisco. In fact, the only San Francisco location I saw was at the end of the film at the piers along the Embarcadero. Ah well, this is Hollywood! I cannot be all that nitpicky, this was a predictable, but, corker of a movie. The action in the last reel was pretty exciting and I enjoyed it. A nice restoration by the National Film Archive of Japan and I'm grateful I had the chance to see this film.

Onward to Day 4!