I wondered about this one. Lon Cheney plays the parts of two Manchurians -- the old Wu and the son Wu. The idea of a white actor playing an Asian character doesn't 100% bother me, but I do wish the character of Nang Ping (Wu's daughter) had been played by an Asian actress (she's played by the white actress (Renée Adorée). Basil Gregory (Ralph Forbes) will fall in love with Nang, and they will kiss and stuff, which means to meet "code" or society restrictions, Nang had to be played by a white actress -- I'm thinking a white actor and an Asian actress probably weren't allowed to kiss on screen in 1927. (So the idea that a white guy and an Asian woman could fall in love is really progressive, if you think about it.)
Anyway, the old Wu is somewhat progressive. He wants to raise his son as a good Chinese, but he also understands that for his son to be ready to live in the modern world, it will help for him to know the ways of the West. Mr. Gregory (Holmes Herbert) is Mr. Wu's western advisor and friend, and he agrees to stay on as the younger Wu's teacher and advisor.
The film jumps ahead ten or fifteen years, Wu marries the woman selected for him, but she dies in childbirth. The child is Nang, and the film jumps ahead another 20 years. Now it's Nang's turn to marry. But in the months before her wedding day, she's been secretly seeing Basil. Things are going just swell for them, but the relationship is a secret, she has been promised in marriage to someone else, and Basil's dad is racist.
When Basil's family is preparing to leave China, Basil tells Nang that duty forces him to go home with his parents. She, however, has a "golden secret," She whispers this in Basil's ear, and whatever she said was enough for him to stay in China. Meanwhile, Wu tells his daughter it's time for her to marry the man he's selected for her. Nang still hasn't told her father about Basil, and she definitely hasn't told her dad her "golden secret."
Wu is "called away" but asks Nang to stand in for him when the Gregory family comes over for tea. Basil's father didn't want to "drink tea with Chinks," but he comes anyway. He surreptitiously dumps out his cup of tea, then tries a bite of the biscuit given to him, calling what the Chinese eat "silly." His wife apologizes for his "bluff manners." I looked up that fun phrase. It just means "direct and blunt, but with good intentions." I'm not sure Mr. Gregory's intentions are "good and I wonder what he's doing in China in the first place. I assume he's just there to make money...
In a brief private conversation with Nang, Mrs. Gregory says that she longs to hold her son's child, completely oblivious to the fact that she's speaking to the woman her son has knocked up. Nang is dying to tell her that she's pregnant, but can't, of course. Mrs. Gregory goes on by mentioning how white the skin and how blue the eyes are "of our babies." Although Mrs. Gregory isn't a racist like her husband, she still obviously would never consider it possible for her son to fall in love with and marry an Asian woman.
Nang realizes that she has a problem. There is no room for her in the Gregory universe. She cannot marry Basil and live in the West. She cannot tell her father that she's in love with Basil and start a life with him in China. She needs to see Basil one more time to break it off, but then what her future holds is still uncertain. She is in zugzwang -- she has no good legal moves to forward her life. When she does see Basil again, she tells him that she lied. She's not really pregnant. It was just a test. This makes Basil happy and horny. He starts kissing her again, promising to see her again tomorrow. Maybe he will stay behind after all, and maybe they will just continue their secret fantasy life.
Unfortunately, Wu has returned and sees Basil and his daughter smooching in the Lotus garden. He now knows that his daughter has been a bad girl, and according to culture and tradition, it is his job to kill her to save her honor. His men carry off Basil, and now Wu must decide if he has the courage to carry out the death sentence on Nang.
Well, he does have the courage, and Nang has the obedience. She doesn't fear death and only asks Wu to spare punishment against Basil. Weirdly enough, Wu's compound has a whole stage set up for the ritual punishment ceremony. Nang walks to her spot, Wu follows, holds up the sword, and the curtain closes on Nang's life. Wu never knew that his daughter was pregnant. No one really knew, except for us. Wu killed her just because he saw them kissing. Imagine what he would have done if he had seen them doing more than that...
Is Wu a loser? A monster? Those are the usual roles that Chaney plays, but as you watch this one, it's difficult to see him as either. Maybe he's simply a trapped man. He must preserve and defend the traditions of his culture. He has to kill his own daughter. The choice is not his to make, just as the choice wasn't Nang's to make on who she falls in love with. I like that the ritual killing happened on a stage, because it just visually reinforces that life is nothing but a performance. We are all actors, and we must submit to our roles. No improv allowed.
The ending itself could be when Wu turns into the Monster. He brings Mrs. Gregory to his compound and then he turns himself into Jigsaw, offering her a choice. Either he will kill her son, or he will rape her daughter. This is the "Eye for an Eye" Western justice that she can appreciate, he says. She, of course, is stunned. She doesn't want to make the decision but finally tells him that her son would prefer to be killed to save his sister.
And yet, before Wu can ring the gong that will sound Basil's death, Mrs. Gregory has picked up a dagger. She offers to kill herself to ransom her children. Wu rejects the offer, saying that it is the parent's role to live and suffer. So, instead of stabbing herself, she stabs him instead, and he still staggers over to ring the gong. Before he can do so, however, the translucent superimposed image of his daughter reaches out her arms to him and asks him to stop. He does so, dies, reuniting with his daughter, and as the movie closes "ends the House of Wu."
Most Letterboxd reviewers seemed to hate this one and couldn't get passed the "yellowface" and "racism" of the film. I'm not denying that its problematic and worth discussing, but the film is worth a closer analysis than that. If you want to get anything out of watching this film, don't dismiss it so quickly. Compared to the other Lon Chaney films I've been watching recently, this is the first one that kept my attention from beginning to end. I was totally invested in the story, and I thought Chaney did a magnificent job in the lead role.
Rating: 5/5 stars
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