The Toll of the Sea

Anna May Wong gives a heartfelt performance and the color is novel, but the plot is pure crap. Watched this for historical reasons. Fav scene: giving the kid away brings out so many emotions in Wong and I.

A pretty insignificant weepy, narratively speaking, from other heavy melodramas of the period. It really only sticks out because it's the first Technicolor film ever made (and because no one thought it would work, no one really tried. Hence the script and most of the acting); and the one exception to the latter, Anna May Wong. Her perhaps modern, perhaps raw method is truly affecting.

Anna May Wong is so good

A doomed mythical romance. "Oh, Sea, now that life has been emptied I come to pay my great debt to you" Love has a price.

racist.

Anna May Wong is cute.

A very early Anna Mae Wong vehicle notable for being the first 2-strip Technicolor film, and the first wide-release Technicolor film in history. Artistically, however, it is not as significant: It's a moral melodrama loosely based on Madame Butterfly. It's not bad but doesn't stand out from the usual silent film fare.