The Dragon Painter
Starring: Sessue Hayakawa, Toyo Fujita, Edward Peil Snr
Director: William Worthington
The film: Japanese-born Sessue Hayakawa was the first Asian actor to become a major Hollywood star. He appeared in dozens of films from 1913-22 (when a rise in anti-Japanese sentiment in America forced him to relocate to France, where his career continued) and even started his own production company, Haworth, so that he could have complete control over his career.
For a time his popularity rivalled even that of Charlie Chaplin and Rudolph Valentino, whose career Hayakawa inadvertently kick-started when he turned down the lead role in The Sheik (1921), the film that made Valentino's name.
Few of Hayakawa's early films are still in existence - it's estimated that 75 per cent of American silent films have been lost to neglect and decay - but this new DVD release of one of his most popular productions, The Dragon Painter, at least offers a rare glimpse of Asia's only Hollywood matinee idol at work in his heyday.
Hayakawa (above right) plays a mentally unbalanced artist, who, in the mountains of Hakone (in fact Yosemite National Park, California), spends his every waking moment painting pictures of a dragon whom he believes embodies the spirit of his long-lost fiancee. Impressed by his brushwork, an ageing Tokyo artist schemes to take him on as an apprentice. To coax him from the mountains, the old man uses his daughter, whom Hayakawa is led to believe might be his missing love. More of interest as an historical document than great film entertainment, The Dragon Painter has its moments but does drag from time to time.