There are frustrations watching this movie. It is interminably slow to start.
Then "Princess" Taou Yuen (Wong) arrives, the new wife of dashing, handsome, prosperous, ... and callow sea captain, Gerrit Ammidon.
The movie doesn't adequately explain why she would stoop to such a marriage. Marrying a barbarian and moving away to a distant, strange land. For Taou Yuen is no frail butterfly. She is an intelligent, moral almost to a fault, and tolerant of the difficulties she knows she will face in this strange land. In this movie, Bristol, England, in the book and original movie, the City of Witches, Salem, Massachusetts. That locale was not by accident.
The plot is "Madama Butterfly" turned upside down, then shaken. "Lieutenant Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton" is true to his promise-he brings his "Cho Cho San" to his home.
What happens next?
The story has only true strong, well developed characters: Wong's brilliant performance as Taou Yuen, and George Curzon as her nemesis, the failed China trader, Edward Dunsack, half-mad with opium, and suffering a fixation that today might be called "yellow fever". He is as relentless as Othello's Iago to Wong's Desdemona. It's brilliant. John Loder is wooden as the newlywed captain.
There are some cringe-worthy moments; the moment after the climactic scene worst.
Wong's descent into something like madness is a wonder to behold. The climax is astonishing; incomprehensible in some ways, but perfectly logical in others. There are strikingly modern elements in the story-sexual obsession, drug use, religious fanaticism, semi-nudity. And Anna May gets to kiss the romantic lead. For once.
In this movie, only one character loves, adores Princess Taou Yuen just as she is. Laurel, a young girl in the Ammidon clan.
There is some humor. Some broad and some effective.
The last 20 minutes is a runaway carriage, figuratively and literally.
An inanimate object, a smuggled chest of raw opium, decides the fates of all the characters.
Along with the beautiful, serene, tolerant, intelligent Taou Yuen,
A sea chest of opium wreaks upon the English port city the havoc that the Opium Wars wreaked upon China.
It is Karma.
A great, flawed movie. Stop the movie as soon as Anna May's face dissolves on the screen at the end. Don't ruin it.
Then "Princess" Taou Yuen (Wong) arrives, the new wife of dashing, handsome, prosperous, ... and callow sea captain, Gerrit Ammidon.
The movie doesn't adequately explain why she would stoop to such a marriage. Marrying a barbarian and moving away to a distant, strange land. For Taou Yuen is no frail butterfly. She is an intelligent, moral almost to a fault, and tolerant of the difficulties she knows she will face in this strange land. In this movie, Bristol, England, in the book and original movie, the City of Witches, Salem, Massachusetts. That locale was not by accident.
The plot is "Madama Butterfly" turned upside down, then shaken. "Lieutenant Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton" is true to his promise-he brings his "Cho Cho San" to his home.
What happens next?
The story has only true strong, well developed characters: Wong's brilliant performance as Taou Yuen, and George Curzon as her nemesis, the failed China trader, Edward Dunsack, half-mad with opium, and suffering a fixation that today might be called "yellow fever". He is as relentless as Othello's Iago to Wong's Desdemona. It's brilliant. John Loder is wooden as the newlywed captain.
There are some cringe-worthy moments; the moment after the climactic scene worst.
Wong's descent into something like madness is a wonder to behold. The climax is astonishing; incomprehensible in some ways, but perfectly logical in others. There are strikingly modern elements in the story-sexual obsession, drug use, religious fanaticism, semi-nudity. And Anna May gets to kiss the romantic lead. For once.
In this movie, only one character loves, adores Princess Taou Yuen just as she is. Laurel, a young girl in the Ammidon clan.
There is some humor. Some broad and some effective.
The last 20 minutes is a runaway carriage, figuratively and literally.
An inanimate object, a smuggled chest of raw opium, decides the fates of all the characters.
Along with the beautiful, serene, tolerant, intelligent Taou Yuen,
A sea chest of opium wreaks upon the English port city the havoc that the Opium Wars wreaked upon China.
It is Karma.
A great, flawed movie. Stop the movie as soon as Anna May's face dissolves on the screen at the end. Don't ruin it.