Shanghai Drift

Watching silent films while Ms. Spenser is on a Zoom call is working out well. This time I watched Todd Browning's Asian opium tale Drifting (1923).

It stars Priscilla Dean, an expat living in Shanghai. It starts in media res, explaining that Dean was a big opium dealer, but had to team up with her biggest rival, Wallace Beery. She bought a lot of nice dresses on credit, then her last deal went sideways, and she needs money fast. But now she is getting fed u with the biz. She has a best friend, Edna Tichenor, who has started smoking the stuff, and she needs to get them back to the states before she's too far gone. 

It all ends up with her and Beery needing to go to the Chinese village where the stuff is grown. A westerner has shown up in town, Matt Moore, claiming to be an engineer, looking at re-opening a mine. But the opium gang suspects that he is actually a cop. (They are right.) So they want Dean to vamp him and find out if he's legit. That will get her out of her financial troubles.

Of course, she falls in love with him, but so does the village headman's daughter - played by Anna May Wong. She flirts with him outrageously, because she's fifteen. But considering how gorgeous she is, it must have been pretty tempting. 

It all ends with a big fight that's kind of great.

I thought this was fun but a little odd. Dean is beautiful, but in a very old-fashioned way. She has a strong chin, which makes her look somehow Gay 90s, Gibson Girl-ish. Then there's the missing setup, and the best buddy/junkie who just disappears. Too bad, because Tichenor, with dark makeup around her eyes, languishing in bed with a pipe, looks great. Beery is a great villain, but it's weird to see him so young. Still, there's a lot less yellowface than you might expect - say 50% Chinese playing Chinese. And the final fight is worth watching. Maybe it's more of an oddity, but I was glad to watch it.