The Dragon Painter

I had never heard of The Dragon Painter and decided to watch it. I'm glad I did. It is a beautiful film, almost devoid of the clichés of silent-era acting (broad mannerisms, excessive mugging, etc) that make many silent films so comical to audiences today.

The lead actor is Sessue Hayakawa, who many film fans may remember as the Pirate Captain in the Disney version of Swiss Family Robinson or from Bridge on the River Kwai. Here he delivers a great performance as a "mad" artist that is at times comical and tragic.

The cinematography and art direction are wonderful, as is the soundtrack.

If I have one complaint it is that the inter-titles play too long on the screen. But this is a minor quibble.

A simple tale of madness, loss, redemption and ultimately love, I can't recommend this film highly enough.

This is a lyrical, visually arresting Japanese fairy-tale about a mad artist who is under the impression that the princess of his dreams lurks in an enchanted lake which has turned her into a dragon. SESSUE HAYAKAWA is the intense young man who becomes the protégé of a painter who is looking for new talent. When the man threatens to walk away, the painter reveals that he has a daughter whom he passes off as the princess the painter is looking for.

The trick works and before you know it, the two young people fall in love. But the art of painting eludes him once he has found his lost princess and therein lies the crux of the plot. How will he get it back unless she gives up her life so that her loss will be his gain?

It's an intriguing premise and it's artfully crafted from the very opening scene with outdoor backgrounds photographed in Yosemite to give an authentic feel to the settings. The print shown on TCM is in fairly good condition considering the age and the tinted effects for moonlight give it a haunting spell.

SESSUE HAYAKAWA makes a convincing mad genius and TSURU AOKI is fine as the princess of his dreams, in real life, his wife.

Summing up: For silent film fans, well worth watching with an appropriate background score and acting that is more natural than the usual silent screen technique you might expect. The photography throughout is on the artistic side.

"The Dragon Painter" is an interesting silent film; it's about a painter, his art and, of course for the drama, his love story, which I've found to be a promising setup in various films. Among other silent films, Carl Dreyer's "Michael" (1924) and some of the films by Yevgeni Bauer, mostly "The Dying Swan" (1917), come to mind as other worthwhile explorations of these themes. In being art about art, it naturally lends itself to self-reflexivity. In "The Dragon Painter", we don't actually get to see much of the artist's paintings--besides a couple sketches he tosses over a waterfall and a painting at the exhibition--but that's probably for the best, rather than having imitations shown off instead of art. The art in this film is in the photography of landscapes and nature (waterfalls, horizons overlooking canyons, lush gardens and such), which is pictorially beautiful (inexplicably, this film's cinematographer Frank D. Williams learned his craft at Keystone of all places). For one scene, however, a moonlit sky is actually a painted backdrop, which I think nicely reinforces the narrative's self-reflexivity.

In addition to the art about art, Sessue Hayakawa gives an outstanding performance as the painter. I haven't seen him so lively before, although I've only been privileged to see a couple others of his silent films thus far and "The Bridge on the River Kwai" (1957). He was great in "The Cheat" (1915), but he displayed a different sort of acting, characterization there. Hayakawa in "The Dragon Painter" seems closer to Toshirô Mifune, of Akira Kurosawa's films, than to the Hayakawa of "The Cheat" or "The Bridge on the River Kwai". It's appropriate and displays his versatility well. Sessue's real-life wife, Tsuru Aoki, who steals the other film, "The Wrath of the Gods" (1914) available on the same DVD away from him, is also good. Her role in this one could've been rather thankless, but she makes the most of it. On the other hand, this isn't a perfect gem; too many intertitles and some overly quick shot successions seem to be it's most significant weaknesses. Regardless, I'd recommend this for being one of the better films of its time--or, rather, for being a good movie.

Dragon Painter, The (1919)

*** 1/2 (out of 4)

At times haunting, at times romantic, this once thought lost silent film turned out to be one of the crowning gems of its era. The film tells the story of Tatsu (Sessue Hayakawa), a madman who has become known as The Dragon Painter. Tatsu believes that a thousand years earlier his one and only love had her spirit taken away by a dragon so all he paints in dragons hoping that one day she will return to him. A master painter (Edward Peil, Sr.) living in Tokyo soon learns of Tatsu's great paintings and brings him in telling Tatsu that he knows where the spirit of his love is. The painter offers up his daughter (Toyo Fujita) in return that Tatsu make great paintings but after Tatsu gets his love back he doesn't feel the need to paint anymore. This film was thought lost for decades until a print turned up in 1977 and thankfully one did because this is a rare case where a lost film turns out to be well worth being found. The movie runs just over 50-minutes and it contains some very strong scenes as well as some great performances. The film was done by Hayakawa's own studio so needless to say the budget isn't the biggest but this works well for the film as it creates a tight and unique atmosphere and really captures the culture of Japan. The set design is also very well done and the new music score serves the film very well. For those of you who only know Hayakawa from his role in The Bridge on the River Kwai then you should certainly seek this film out. The Japanese born actor gives a very strong performance here and his scenes as the madman are right on the mark as are the scenes with him stricken with grief. Peil and Fujita also deliver fine performances. It's also nice seeing a film from this period that show a foreign man doing something other than being a gangster or villain.

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. 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 theme. 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...For more reviews visit The Capsule Critic.