A few Tod Browning films.

Drifting (1923), directed by Tod Browning. Browning loves the exotic, and here he goes full oriental in a crime melodrama that dazzles with its sets and costumes, but unsettles with its easy orientalism. It also unsettles with a thrill moment near the end when a horse and rider climb a steep set of steps and just at the top, they tumble off the steps and hurtle down probably thirty feet or more. This was before there were restrictions against harming animals. Anyway, what we have here is a portrait of China as the source of opium, and I suspect the title refers to the state of mind one might have while feeling the effects of opium. One character, the prostitute Molly Norton (Edna Tichenor), spends her screen time drifting while her friend Cassie commiserates with her condition. Two shady Americans are in Shanghai, Cassie Cook (Priscilla Dean) and Jules Repin (Wallace Beery), trafficking in opium when another American, government agent Captain Arthur Jarvis (Matt Moore) appears disguised as a mining engineer. Jarvis is in a remote village to stop the opium trade. He finds himself with two women who fancy him, Cassie Cook and the daughter of the local drug lord, Rose Li (Anna May Wong), who steals the show. The final scene when the battle between the poppy growers, the villagers, and the Chinese government troops is spectacular with the red-tinted screen (sorry I found only a couple of lesser screen captures of this part of the film) and flaming buildings. The film does hold interest, but it is not one of the best Browning silents I have seen. J. Farrell MacDonald takes a turn as a sort of comic relief, playing Murphy, Jarvis’s sidekick, who sets his hat at fifteen-year-old Rose Li. As we expect from Browning, the film does offer instances of the weird. 

 

White Tiger (1923), directed by Tod Browning. The eponymous White Tiger is that wrath that sits inside a person making him or her do criminal things. Here it sits inside Sylvia and Roy Donovan (Priscilla Dean and Raymond Griffith), brother and sister separated while children and later reunited (although they do not know their true identities) through the nefarious huckster, ‘Count’ Donelli (aka Hawkes played by Wallace Beery). Donelli too has the White Tiger inside. The three of them use a mechanical chess player in order to dupe wealthy people and steal their jewels. As things move along, they find themselves on the lam, hiding in a country cottage with another fellow, Dick Longworth (Matt Moore). Here their distrust of each other makes life awkward, until things get out of hand, identities are revealed (I neglected to say that Donelli, aka Hawkes, was responsible for the death of the siblings’ father!). All this is typical for Browning – see for example, Outside the Law (1920) or The Blackbird (1926). We have false identities, betrayal, the hint of incest, a wax museum, a few touches of the uncanny (the number 13, a black cat, and so on), unsavoury characters, claustrophobic settings, the usual Browning world. Unfortunately, the action is somewhat less than coherent. This may be the result of lost bits of the film, I don’t know. The film is, however, essential for Browning completists!

 

More Tod Browning, The Unknown (1927). In this one Lon Chaney plays Alonzo the Armless Knife Thrower. Alonzo's passion is for Nanon (Joan Crawford), daughter of the circus owner. Nanon has a great fear of men, especially men's hands. This makes her repel the advances of the circus strong man, Malabar. She feels safe with Alonzo because he has no hands - or arms. She thinks. It turns out that Alonzo not only has arms, but that he hides them because of his double thumbs on one hand. These thumbs would identify him as a deadly felon, and so he pretends to be armless. Anyhow Alonzo is smitten and to assure Nanon will continue to show affection for him he secretly blackmails a surgeon into removing his arms. When Alonzo, now truly armless, returns to the circus expecting to marry Nanon, he finds that she has overcome her fear of men's hands and has agreed to marry Malabar. Needless to say Alonzo does not take this news as good news. Quite the contrary. Nastiness ensues. Once again, we have Browning indulging his love of circuses and outsiders and strange characters. This is a cautionary tale!