(Gor­don 1955) It Came From Beneath the Sea
(Der­tano 1951) Rack­et Girls [Mys­tery Sci­ence The­atre version]
(Madern & Chap­lin 1914) Twen­ty Min­utes of Love
(Sen­nett 1914) The Fatal Mallet
(Stevens 1956) Alfred Hitch­cock Presents: Ep.39 — Momentum
(Rawl­ins 1942) Sher­lock Holmes and the Voice of Ter­ror Read more »

While he is best known for his role as the Japan­ese camp com­man­der in The Bridge on the Riv­er Kwai, and oth­er films of the 1950s, Ses­sue Hayakawa was a super­star in the silent era. Among Hollywood’s high­est payed stars, he was in the same league with Fair­banks, Chap­lin and Valenti­no. He found­ed his own pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny because he resent­ed the mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion of Asians in Hol­ly­wood films. A metic­u­lous actor, he was high­ly influ­en­tial in trans­form­ing film act­ing meth­ods from the broad ges­tures inher­it­ed from stage act­ing to the more restrained tech­niques appro­pri­ate to film. This film, the sec­ond one in which he appeared, was a sto­ry with a Japan­ese set­ting. A cast­away sailor courts a young girl who has been for­bid­den to mar­ry by a tem­ple prophe­cy. Hayakawa was a young man, hav­ing just dropped out of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go, where he stud­ied eco­nom­ics, but he appears in heavy make­up as the hero­ine’s elder­ly father. The film dis­plays the old­er, melo­dra­mat­ic style of act­ing that Hayakawa was soon to change. The lead­ing female role was played by Tsu­ru Aoki, whom Hayakawa fell in love with and mar­ried dur­ing the pro­duc­tion. Despite the dat­ed act­ing tech­niques, the film holds up well, with some excit­ing action scenes at sea, and some mov­ing moments.

Hayakawa in 1918, four years after this film was made.

Hayakawa led an inter­est­ing life. As a teenag­er in Japan, he attempt­ed sep­puku after fail­ing to qual­i­fy for the naval career his upper class fam­i­ly had planned for him. He played quar­ter­back in Amer­i­can col­lege foot­ball. He stum­bled into act­ing by acci­dent while wait­ing for a ship home, rock­et­ing to star­dom with his good looks. He made for­tunes and lost them gam­bling, lived extrav­a­gant­ly, and became a social lion by buy­ing up a huge stock of liquor just before Pro­hi­bi­tion was enact­ed. He wrote sev­er­al plays and a nov­el. He pro­duced a ver­sion of The Three Mus­ke­teers in Japan. For awhile, broke and out of work, he sup­port­ed him­self by paint­ing water­colours. He moved to France to make films in which he would not be racial­ly stereo­typed — and end­ed up fight­ing in the French Resis­tance. As an mid­dle-aged man, he was able to take on a crowd of young Mex­i­can toughs in a brawl and defeat them hand­i­ly. He retired to become a Zen mas­ter and tutor. Some of his roles won him acco­lades as a mature actor, but he was nev­er pop­u­lar in Japan, where he was con­sid­ered “too American.”

Asian actors in Hol­ly­wood faced com­plex chal­lenges, per­form­ing in the lime­light of a soci­ety that held bizarre and some­times dis­gust­ing atti­tudes about race and eth­nic­i­ty. In the 1920’s, America’s anti-mis­ce­gena­tion laws influ­enced all cast­ing, script-writ­ing and per­for­mance. In the 1930’s the rise of anti-Japan­ese sen­ti­ments and the per­va­sive cen­sor­ship of films did fur­ther dam­age. To weave their way through these obsta­cles, Asians had to be resource­ful and strong. Their achieve­ments should not be forgotten.

(1900) Sher­lock Holmes Baffled
(Kostan­s­ki 2011) Manborg
(Groen­ing & San­doval 2012) Futu­ra­ma: Ep.106 ― Fun on a Bun
(Krish­na DK & Nidi­moru 2013) Go Goa Gone
(Atten­bor­ough 1977) A Bridge Too Far Read more »

(Lawrence 1958) The Crawl­ing Eye [Mys­tery Sci­ence The­atre version]
(Lester 1980) Super­man 2
(Flo­rea 1976) The Astral Factor
(Tulio 1938) The Song of the Scar­let Flower [Laulu tulipunais­es­ta kukasta]
(Gold­stein 2000) 2001: A Space Trav­es­ty Read more »

The Song of the Scar­let Flower

Before the process was mech­a­nized, the logs tak­en from the great forests of north­east­ern North Amer­i­ca were cut in win­ter, then dragged by horse teams to the shores of rivers. This method is still used in Nova Sco­tia to safe­guard some envi­ron­men­tal­ly sen­si­tive forests, since it is far less destruc­tive and more sus­tain­able than clear-cut­ting. When the spring thaw came, the logs were dri­ven down the rivers in great mass­es. Left to them­selves, the logs would jam, and mil­lions of board feet of lum­ber could back up for miles. So the logs had to be care­ful­ly herd­ed down the rivers, like cat­tle. That’s why pro­fes­sion­al log dri­vers were need­ed. No cow­boy ever worked a job as dif­fi­cult and dan­ger­ous as the log dri­ver. He danced across the float­ing logs on foot, bal­anc­ing him­self with his pike pole, skip­ping from bateau to rolling log, to rock, to log jam, like a bal­let dancer. The job required a sort of instinc­tive grasp of physics, mag­i­cal dex­ter­i­ty, and super­hu­man strength. The log dri­ver is a stan­dard char­ac­ter in Cana­di­an folk­lore, cel­e­brat­ed in murals, cur­ren­cy, stamps, and in the clas­sic folk­song The Log Dri­ver’s Waltz (because of his nim­ble foot­work, “a log dri­ver’s waltz pleas­es girls com­plete­ly”). The French-Irish-Ojib­way Cana­di­ans who dom­i­nat­ed this pro­fes­sion faced lit­tle com­pe­ti­tion from any­one else. Not sur­pris­ing­ly, the key tech­ni­cal terms of the trade were either French or Ojib­way (e.g. “wan­ni­gan”, the float­ing sup­ply shack on a tim­ber raft, from Ojib­way wan­nikan orig­i­nal­ly mean­ing “stor­age pit”). But one group of immi­grants to Cana­da did make their mark in this pro­fes­sion: the Finns. The Finns in North-west­ern Ontario were not just bush lum­ber­jacks. They boast­ed log dri­vers as skill­ful as their old­er Cana­di­an rivals on the Sague­nay and Ottawa drives.

Which brings me, in a round­about way, to this film. The rea­son that Finns could be com­pet­i­tive log dri­vers in Cana­da is that the iden­ti­cal pro­fes­sion exist­ed in Fin­land*, and it is the sub­ject of the old­est Finnish motion pic­ture in my film col­lec­tion, Laulu tulipunais­es­ta kukas­ta (1938) [“The Song of the Scar­let Flower”]. It is not a cin­e­mat­ic mas­ter­piece. The act­ing is melo­dra­mat­ic, the cut­ting some­times awk­ward, and much of it feels more like a silent film of twen­ty years before. But it’s direc­tor, Teu­vo Tulio, had great tal­ent. The film’s enthu­si­asm and sin­cer­i­ty make up for what it lacks in sophis­ti­ca­tion. The sto­ry is based on a nov­el by Johannes Lin­nankos­ki, and fol­lows the life of a young man who skips from girl to girl as eas­i­ly as he skips from log to log, until his sin­ful­ness catch­es up to him and forces him into spir­i­tu­al redemp­tion. All very pietist. A French Cana­di­an ver­sion of this sto­ry would­n’t both­er with the redemp­tion part, or for that mat­ter see where there was any “sin” to redeem. I haven’t read the nov­el, so I don’t know if it is a faith­ful adap­ta­tion, or what ele­ments are Tulio’s rather than Lin­nankoski’s. The book had already been filmed twice in a 1919 silent ver­sion, and in Swedish by Per-Axel Bran­ner in 1934. It would be remade yet again in 1956. I don’t think any of these ver­sions found an audi­ence out­side of Fin­land and Scandinavia. 

As always with old films, I watch part­ly just to see visu­al details of the past and oth­er places. The film gives no hint of the dev­as­tat­ing war that Fin­land would have thrust upon it only a year after its release. The coun­try peo­ple play a rather strange ver­sion of the game of “tag”. The inte­ri­ors of the squared log hous­es are spar­tan, but nev­er­the­less already dis­play the Finnish knack for flu­id design. The kitchens look par­tic­u­lar­ly nice. And, in a wild riv­er land­scape indis­tin­guish­able from fron­tier Que­bec or Ontario, the log dri­ve flows under one of those super-mod­ern bridges that Finns were build­ing in the 1930’s. The effect is dis­con­cert­ing, as if some­one had crude­ly pho­to-shopped the film with a mod­ern snap.

The love scenes are far more sen­su­ous than any­thing that would have been per­mit­ted in Amer­i­can cin­e­ma in 1938. There is an absolute­ly delight­ful nude scene. But the best parts of the film are the log dri­ving scenes, which are both gen­uine­ly excit­ing and tech­ni­cal­ly accurate. 
———
— - — *search­ing for infor­ma­tion on the sub­ject, I came across this quote from Finnish film-mak­er Markku Var­jo­la: “In the Finnish con­scious­ness the log­ger occu­pies the role of the cow­boy from the Amer­i­can her­itage. He has rep­re­sent­ed adven­ture, free­dom and inde­pen­dence, con­stant­ly mov­ing true man, a van­ish­ing breed.”, a sen­ti­ment that could just as eas­i­ly have been writ­ten in Canada.

(Jack­son 2001) The Lord of the Rings: The Fel­low­ship of the Ring [the­atri­cal version]
(MacGillivray 2006) Greece: Secrets of the Past [IMAX film]
(Graves 2013) Game of Thrones: Ep.24 ― And Now His Watch Is Ended
(Mar­shall 1939) You Can’t Cheat an Hon­est Man Read more »

(Winch­combe 2012) Orkney’s Stone Age Temple
(Grif­fith 1909) A Cor­ner in Wheat
(Cas­tle 1963) Zotz!
(Cline 1941) Nev­er Give a Suck­er an Even Break Read more »