thenationofartists.com

First printed at www.movingpicturesnetwork.com

Reviewed by Elliot V. Kotek
(at the Toronto International Film Festival 2007; Golden Horse Award winner)

Director: Arthur Dong
Starring: Nancy Kwan, Joan Chen, Tsai Chin, James Hong, Christopher Lee, Justin Lin

(Writing from TIFF, where he brought his film for its premiere, Arthur Dong shares with MPM the personal story behind the film.)

In-a-nutshell:
With Chinese the largest visible minority in Canada, it is not too surprising that the TIFF programmers chose to schedule Hollywood Chinese in this year’s festival. From the unfamiliar fame of Anna May Wong (The Toll of the Sea, Shanghai Express), to her perceived snubbing as the lead in The Good Earth, Dong’s documentary simmers amidst old-Hollywood’s promotion teams serving up top-billing to Caucasian stars in “yellow-face” in films promoted by teams pulling Chinese oxen through San Francisco’s streets inhabited by white women in silk dresses – in order to appeal to the all-white audiences inhabiting the theaters of the day.

Dong’s subjects suitably reveal the stereotypes to which they surrendered ”just to pay the bills” and contemplate the Chinese characters portrayed by Agnes Moorhead, Tony Randall, Sydney Toler, Orland Winter, Boris Karloff, John Wayne and Katherine Hepburn. 

The team of Chinese American actors assembled deliberate the upside and downside of the Charlie Chan (Chan was white, but his first son was Chinese and successful) and Fu Manchu (a torture master yet highly educated) franchises, and take turns recalling the diction lessons necessary to learn the Confucian “Fortune Cookie” conversations that proliferated a humiliating pidgin English never spoken by these actors in real life. Nancy Kwan’s success as the first Chinese American leading lady not bound to yellow roles also came at a price, the covers of Life and Esquire earned only after taking on the portrayal of a prostitute in The World of Suzie Wong. However, as often as Kwan or Lisa Lu recall the typecasting of Asian American actresses as hookers and barmaids, anyone with a hint of acting training can recall those classes when any actress of any nationality complained of the limited roles written for women generally.