Daughter of Shanghai (1937)

Redundant and unnecessary.

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

Sometimes it is enough that a film give you an interesting perspective on the times. In that way, what originally was a piece of light fiction becomes instead a documentary. The story here is cobbled together from modules common of the era:Beautiful "girl" goes undercover to avenge murder of her father and has at least one episode of having to be sexy. A pre-noir detective is on the case. Some novel or exotic element from culture or is thrown in. This time it is the smuggling of Asians. Both our beauty and detective are Asian actors.At the end, there is an admiring mention of the brand new social security act.The tone of this is fascinating, a balance of admiration and respect for the Chinese with just enough alien helplessness to color it. (They are saved by a dumb Irishman; dumb as he is, and as reviled as his cohort of immigrants were at the time, he represents here good old American values.)The settings contrast the order of San Francisco to the unruliness of the "Asian seas." The cargo of Chinese sometimes gets tossed into the sea by opening the bomb bay — something then brand new. Movie viewers would be aware of this innovation through newsreels touting the design of what would then be called the Y1B-17, later the B-17.Tossed in: the head of the gang, someone described throughout as mean, cheap and to be feared — is a society matron, and there is a mother-daughter betrayal subtext going on. The matron is "white" of course and early in the film we know she is an avid purchaser of Chinese princess regalia.A brief tour through public interest in weapon design, racial awareness and critical introspection into American values and capitalism. Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.

There's much to admire in this Robert Florey melodrama, which plays more like a pre-Code feature than a 1937 quickie. The ravishingly beautiful Anna May Wong gets the bulk of the screen time as Lan Ying Lin, a San Francisco gal whose art dealer father (Ching Wah Lee) has been murdered by smugglers. She's soon on their trail with the assistance of FBI agent Kim Lee (taciturn Philip Ahn). The film also features outstanding performances by Charles Bickford as grizzled human cattle herder Hartmann and Cecil Cunningham as the brains behind the operation. Charles Schoenbaum's cinematography is excellent and especially impressive for a second feature: he uses unusual proto-noir camera angles and doesn't resort to the predictable set-ups you generally see in 'B' pictures. Ultimately, though, this is Wong's film, and though she was never a great actress, it's clear that if not for her ethnicity she would (and should) have been a big star.

This is a relatively low budget B-movie and aside from one factor, it's pretty ordinary for the genre. The difference is the casting. First, the film has an unusually large number of very talented supporting characters such as Charles Bickford, Buster Crabbe, Anthony Quinn and J. Carrol Naish. Second, in a very unusual move for its sensitivity, the film stars two Asian actors--Anna May Wong and Philip Ahn. In just about every other case during this era, Asian leading characters were played by Westerners and this is the only film of the era I can think of that was made in the USA that had two Asians playing leading and sympathetic roles. Oddly, while Ahn is clearly the leading man, he is given low billing while Wong gets top billing. Perhaps this is because he was never a star and didn't command the same level of pay as Wong, although in Ahn's VERY long career, he appeared in 174 parts! The film is about an evil group of human smugglers who kill Wong's father and try to kill her as well. Instead of waiting to inherit her father's fortune and live a quiet life, she goes undercover to infiltrate the gang. Later, Ahn also appears with the baddies, as he also infiltrated the gang. Now it's up to the pair to bring these folks to justice.The fight scenes and script are all pretty standard. Apart from its sensitive portrayal of the Chinese (they were like real people--not patronized or evil), there isn't a whole lot to make this film anything other than a standard B programmer. However, for cinephiles like myself, it's an important film for being a bit of a milestone for Asians in Hollywood--too bad that this success didn't translate to more such films until the 1960s and later.

These are indeed heady times for fans of the actress Anna May Wong. Not only are there two (2!) biographies of the woman in recent release, but a documentary of Anna May's life is purportedly in the works, a restored print of Wong's late silent classic "Piccadilly" has just been released, AND, for those lucky of us to live in NYC, an Anna May Wong retrospective has just unreeled in this town's Museum of Modern Art. Although hugely popular in the 1920s and '30s, up until recently Hollywood's first Asian actress of any kind of renown has languished in relative obscurity, known only to fans of old-timey movies...perhaps. When I told some coworkers that I was going to see some Anna May, I half expected them to make some remark about Japanese comics (anime). I have been a fan of Ms. Wong's for many years now, although that fandom has been largely based on just a handful of films, most especially the 1932 von Sternberg classic "Shanghai Express." Her part in this picture is not large, but she makes such a mysterious and exotic impression that that brief performance was enough to make a convert of me. With the exception of the 1949 film noir "Impact" and one or two others, though, it has been extremely hard for fans of this once-famous actress to see her other work. It was therefore with great anticipation that I attended the MoMA's double bill of two of Anna May's rare '30s work: "Dangerous to Know" and "Daughter of Shanghai." The first is a compact little B picture, in which Anna May is the kept mistress of crime boss Akim Tamiroff. It was a lot of fun, and very interesting, but the latter is the one that I really enjoyed. Anna May is without question the star of "DOS," and the picture, although admittedly in the B category, is as fun as can be. In this one, Ms. Wong plays the daughter of a Chinese shop owner in San Francisco. When her dad is killed by alien smugglers who are pressuring him into taking on a load of their human cargo, Anna May goes undercover to track down the bad guys. Her quest takes her to Central America, where she winds up taking a job as a dancer in one of the seediest dives you've ever seen on film. The owner of this joint is Charles Bickford, who is believed to be one of the heads of the smuggling operation. "DOS" features some surprisingly gritty action scenes, and some real cliffhanger moments. Ms. Wong is aided in her quest to smash the alien smugglers by a G-man played by Philip Ahn. I'd never seen Mr. Ahn play a "good guy" before; he was so often cast as a sneaky weasel type. Anyway, he's very effective in the role of Anna May's partner. J. Carrol Naish and Anthony Quinn (in a very early role) are both hissably fun as two of the nasty smugglers. It is really quite remarkable how much story and action are packed into this film's short, 63-minute running time. And for fans of Anna May Wong, the picture is heavenly. What a delight it is to see this charming actress take the lead role in a smashing action picture, and go undercover in that Central American sleazepit. The audience at the MoMA burst into spontaneous applause at the conclusion of this nifty B picture, and that applause was certainly merited. This is one fun hour at the movies!