The Typhoon (1914) User Reviews

"Typhoon": A lot of wind and hot air.

[F Gwynplaine MacIntyre · 4/10 · 1 February 2008]

I saw 'The Typhoon' in October 2006 at the Cinema Muto film festival in Sacile, Italy. The festival screened a print from Eastman House, restored via funding from the (U.S.) National Endowment for the Arts. The film's title is mostly symbolic, referring either to tempestuous emotions or to the implacable torrent of destiny.

As he did so many times during his Hollywood career, Japanese actor Sessue Hayakawa portrays here a Japanese character intended for Occidental audiences: a yellow man whose penchant for white women combines with a bizarre code of honour unlike our western ethos.

SPOILERS THROUGHOUT. This time round, Hayakawa portrays Tokorama (is that an authentic Japanese name?), a diplomatic staff officer at the Japanese embassy in Paris. Tokorama is having an affair with an American woman ... white, of course. Other Japanese staffers at the embassy deem this relationship improper and they try to intercede, but they succeed only in setting up an Othello-like (Othelloid?) situation, provoking Tokorama into murdering the woman.

Allegedly, Tokorama's diplomatic work is so essential to relations between Japan and France, the Japanese government cannot afford to have him prosecuted. A younger Japanese man, named Hironari, is persuaded to take the blame for Tokorama's crime ... for the honour of Japan, of course. Hironari is tried and executed, but then Tokorama conveniently dies anyway. Rather than revealing the truth after Tokorama's death, his colleagues decide that -- for the honour of Japan -- the truth must never be revealed. All of Tokorama's diaries and papers are deliberately destroyed.

Ah, so! Ah, so much of this movie seems so very pointless. After contriving a plot line in which the innocent Hironari is executed for Tokorama's act -- really a crime of passion more than a murder -- the film-makers make sure that Tokorama dies anyway, probably to satisfy American and European audiences' sense of justice.

In some of his other Hollywood films, Hayakawa managed to portray dignified and heroic figures with a true sense of honour. Here, all the evasions which are set up for his benefit -- allegedly a matter of 'honour' -- only manage to help Hayakawa's character escape responsibility for his own actions. If this were the only Sessue Hayakawa movie I'd ever seen, I wouldn't have a high opinion of him as an actor.

'The Typhoon' does have a few merits, but it's not a good introduction to Hayakawa's film career. I was intrigued to see Frank Borzage in this film, in a supporting role: Borzage became one of the most important Hollywood directors of the late silent era and the 1930s. His acting performance in this film proves that he was wise to become a director. I'll rate 'The Typhoon' just 4 points out of 10.

Sessue Hayakawa's Starmaking Role

[briantaves · 15 October 2011]

The Typhoon (1914) has nothing to do with the weather, and at first seems a surprising story of race. It was the second in Thomas Ince's series of Japanese dramas bringing Tsuru Aoki and Sessue Hayakawa to the screen, as I outline in my Ince biography.

The credits introduce Gladys Brockwell as Helene, a French actress, who is in love with Hayakawa as Tokorama. A Japanese spy, he is eager to finish compiling the statistics (hardly sounding like espionage) his country needs. He initially brushes Helene off, then they kiss, and there is a clear physical attraction. Yet to his fellow countrymen, who move together in an assemblage that resembles the Keystone Cops, Tokorama must deny her. He responds, "The girl is only a pleasant past-time. Nothing but death will make me forget my duty to Nippon."

Gladys throws over her dissipated fiancée, Bernisky (played by Frank Borzage, the white costar of the earlier Aoki-Hayakawa vehicle, The Wrath of the Gods), boasting "I am through with you. I have a young Japanese sweetheart who interests me more." However, she had not told Tokorama about Bernisky, instead saying there was no one else in her life. When he learns of his predecessor, Tokorama tells Helene to leave, but ultimately cannot let her go. She then abruptly turns against Tokorama with racial epithets, and he angrily strangles her, and in order to insure the continuance of his mission, allows one of the other spies to take responsibility. But in the trial his relationship to Helene is revealed by her girlfriend, while Tokorama's tortured conscience compels him to suicide.

Rather than a parable about the perils of inter-racial romance, Helene seems more the victim of a hysterical outburst, with Tokorama a typical jealous lover. The film was an adaptation of Laurence Irving's English version of a Hungarian stage play by Melchior Lengyel. Hayakawa had seen The Typhoon performed by a white cast, and wrote "the play captivated me with its sheer dramatic appeal." He also regarded staging The Typhoon as an opportunity to perform for audiences beyond those of his own nationality. In 1913 Hayakawa brought together a Japanese cast to perform it, taking the lead role himself, and it was while playing the part that he met Aoki.

Despite having been the motivating force behind staging The Typhoon with a Japanese cast, within two years Hayakawa would say of the movie version and The Wrath of the Gods, "Such roles are not true to our Japanese nature .... They are false and give people a wrong idea of us." He may have been reacting to the criticism of the roles in both their homeland and in Japanese communities; The Wrath of the Gods was banned in Japan on the basis that it presented the country's people as primitive.

Hayakawa recalled that Ince came to see him after a performance of the play, desirous of filming it with much the same Japanese cast. They began with a three month contract, shooting in April as soon as the play closed its run at a Los Angeles theater. Ince supervised, while Barker directed and Sullivan provided the adaptation.

Aoki's courtship by Hayakawa continued during the making of The Typhoon, and they were married on May 1, 1914. Ince gave them four days off for a La Jolla honeymoon. The romance provided effective publicity for their films together, and the press portrayed them as a traditional Japanese couple adapted to contemporary American society, a perfect blend of the old and the new. Ince proceeded with his plans for a series with them and quickly granted Hayakawa's request for a raise to $500 per week, making him the highest paid Asian player.

The Typhoon had been Hayakawa's star-making role. Having initially appeared in features, followed by a series of two reel films, nine months later he was ready to leave Ince to join Jesse Lasky and continue in features for Paramount. Within two years he was earning $7500 a week, and by the end of the decade had his own production company.

A Whirlwind of Melodrama

[dizozza · 7/10 · 29 December 2006]

This film is incongruously dramatic in its portrayal of diplomatic indiscretions, between officials from the US and Japan, over those Parisian showgirls... This silent film's date is 1914! The print I saw, at the Museum of Modern Art, was rather minimalist in title cards. After a lengthy expressive discussion followed a quick summary on the title card. The storytelling is mostly visual. Imagine the sound of the actor's voices, and then imagine what they are saying.

Where is the Typhoon in Paris? It may be a reference to the Japanese source for the word, which is "taifu." The story degenerates into a tremendous waste of manpower, so to speak. Though it looked great, it could have been kinder to its cultural references.

By the way, in general, the surviving print of this movie contained a breathtaking amount of visual information, more than what we see in today's films. There was no cropping, no soundtrack; in silent films the camera filled the entire 35mm film frame with a photo-image.

Update: September 15th. The Typhoon is one of the films featuring a great romantic leading actor, Sessue Hayakawa. In the films I saw at the Museum of Modern Art last night, Mr. Hayakawa called to mind Elvis Presley. (The Museum showed French titled fragments from "The Hidden Pearls," an Eastman House restoration of "The Dragon Painter," and finally, "The Tong Man," produced by his own production company Haworth Pictures. You may already be familiar with this actor who was the other protagonist in "Bridge on the River Kwai.")