The Dragon Painter

A mentally disturbed artist (Sessue Hayakawa), from the mountains of Japan, is convinced that his fiancee, a beautiful princess, has been captured and turned into a dragon. His obsession with his fictitious loss, leads to his artistic inspiration.

It isn't until a young surveyor, (Toyo Fujita) comes across some of Tatsu's artwork, that his genius is discovered. The surveyor then informs the famous artist, Kano Indara about his discovery, who immediately agrees to meet Tatsu.

Indara, his daughter Ume-Ko, and Undobuchida soon realise that they cannot persuade Tetsu to come down from the mountains to further his talent as an artist, without a ploy.

Ume-Ko consequently dresses up as a Princess, and the promise of Tatsu being re-united with his long lost love, lures him into Kano Indara's house. Of course, the family realises that Tatsu has a lot of uncivilized and crazy habits which he needs to get rid of, if he is going to fit into civilized Japanese society.

Overall, the movie is a very sweet and interesting piece. There is great use of color-tinting throughout the film, which perfectly reflects the mood and theme. Hayakawa does an awesome job at playing a madman- a good combination of dramatic and comical acting.

Although it is not the best silent movie I've ever seen, it is definitely worth watching. It's a lovely little fairy tale which puts a smile on your face!

"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.

The film produced by Hayakawa's own production company Hayworth indeed has a different "look" from the contemporaneous Orientalist productions of Hollywood. Although it does fulfill the almost obligatory casting of Caucasian actors playing yellowface, Edward Peil Sr.'s Japanese art master Kano Indara doesn't seem at all attempt to be "authentic" oriental, not to mention to compete with his Japanese/Asian co-actors as one would find with Warner Oland in films such as The Daughter of Dragon and Shanghai Express. Sessue Hayakawa and Tsuru Aoki are without the doubt the focus of this film. The scenic design also avoids the extravagant Orientalist/art deco ornaments popular at that time, opting for a simple interior design, while lavishing on the natural landscapes framed as quintessential Japanese (despite the fact that they were shot in California). Moreover, the Japaneseness of this film has something to do with the occasional violation of the classical Hollywood editing rules; for instance, the eye-line match in the scene in which the surveyor finds out the talent of the dragon painter by the waterfall is completely off, creating a sense of spatial disorientation that predates Ozu.

As a sidenote, Hayakawa's madman also foresees the famous acting of Toshiro Mifune.