THE TONG MAN (1919)

The Bo Sing Tong is a powerful secret society in Chinatown which maintains its grip on the community through blackmail and assassination—the film starts with a man being shot dead on the street one night by a Tong member. Ming Tai, the Spider of Chinatown, is the head of the tong and keeper of the tong's joss, or idol, a large dragon head with a hollow interior. Ming Tai's latest concern is merchant and opium smuggler Louis Toy who refuses to pay protection money to the tong. Assassin Luk Chen, whose weapon of choice is a small hatchet, is assigned to deal with Louis Toy, but complications arise when he falls for Toy's daughter, Sen Chee. In a balcony scene right out of Romeo and Juliet, Chen tells Sen Chee that he plans to have enough money soon to leave for a new life in China. Ultimately, Chen can't bring himself to kill Toy, so Ming Tai bargains with Toy: he will spare Toy's life if he can claim Sen Chee for himself. Also involved is Lucero, a sailor who stabbed a white man who had cheated him in gambling and is on the run from the law. He is taken in by Toy and, in Shakespeare terms, becomes a kind of Friar Lawrence or Nursemaid sidekick to Chen and San Chee, especially when he hears Ming Tai decide that Chen must die. At the climax, there is a messy street melee (filmed in bad day-for-night shots) and someone gets a hatchet in the face (explicit but not gory—figure that one out). Our romantic couple gets a happy ending as Lucero tags along with them to China. I've talked about Sessue Hayakawa, who plays Luk Chen, on this blog before. He was that rarity in Hollywood films of the era, an authentic and popular Asian lead actor. He was Japanese, but plays Chinese here, as does the Japanese Yutaka Abe as Lucero. Other lead roles are taken by Anglo actors in yellowface: Marc Robbins as Ming Tai, Helen Jerome Eddy as San Chee (though to be fair, she's not so much in yellowface as drabface), Yutaka Abe, who later became a director, is skinny and handsome with a modern short-on-the-sides haircut. His character has promise, but is basically around just to help our hero. The acting is largely of the traditional silent type, with lots of melodramatic glances and secretive stares. In addition to being inspired by Shakespeare, it's based directly on a novel, The Dragon's Daughter by Clyde Westover, which is still in print. At an hour, it's paced fairly well and, for silent movie fans, is worth watching. Pictured at right is Yutaka Abe. [TCM]