The Dragon Painter
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The Dragon Painter Customer Reviews
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♥♥♥♥♥
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Remarkable Sessue Hayakawa Double Bill.
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It has taken a long time for THE DRAGON PAINTER to reach home DVD. Announced well over a year ago, it had to wait for Milestone Films to find a new distributor which they did in New Yorker Films. Now we can finally see this long unavailable title and see how beautiful it is. The slight story is a variation on the woman sacrifices self for man so that he can succeed chestnut. In this case Hayakawa plays a wild mountain artist who paints dragons while searching for a princess. Once he finds her he loses the ability to paint until she takes matters into her own hands. The "princess" is played by Tsuru Aoki who was Hayakawa's wife in real life and their affection for each other shows. It's also interesting to see Edward Peil playing another oriental role. The same year (1919) he was in D.W. Griffith's BROKEN BLOSSOMS as Evil Eye. The film was beautifully photographed and looks quite good in this George Eastman House restoration of a French print.
The real treasure here though is the even rarer WRATH OF THE GODS also from George Eastman House. A major American produced film featuring Asian actors (Hayakawa, Aoki and others) in 1914 seems incredibly enlightened when you think of all the "yellow peril" parts that were just a few years down the road. The story borrows elements from MADAME BUTTERFLY and BIRD OF PARADISE and features future director Frank Borzage (SEVENTH HEAVEN) in one of his early acting roles. WRATH was produced by Thomas Ince who was one of the major players in the movie industry's early days but is remembered today only for his mysterious death involving William Randolph Hearst's yacht in 1924 and for the studio he built which would later become Cecil B. DeMille's and then David O. Selznick's. This is really a shame because as WRATH and an earlier title from 1916 (CIVILIZATION which has yet to make it to DVD) show, Ince's surviving films are very advanced for their time in their realistic portrayal of serious subjects and their no nonsense approach to quality filmmaking. Both films have been properly tinted and have atmospheric new Japanese style scores.
Once again thanks are due to Milestone Films for making important rarely seen silent movies available for home viewing. Hopefully all their distribution problems are now worked out so that we can expect to see a flurry of Milestone releases in the near future. They haven't issued a catalogue in some time nor updated their website and there were quite a few announced titles that have yet to appear on DVD. Welcome back Milestone, silent film fans have missed you. |
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The Dragon Painter dvd movie.