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| Richard Eichberg: Song (DE/GB 1928). Anna May Wong (Song). |
SONG. DIE LIEBE EINES ARMEN MENSCHENKINDES (Schmutziges Geld) (Show Life) (May Song, la bambola di Shangai) / Kiinalaistyttö Song.
DE/GB 1928 Eichberg-Film GmbH (Berlin), British International Pictures Ltd. (B.I.P.) (London).
Dir: Richard Eichberg. Scen: Adolf Lantz, Helen Gosewisch, from the novella by Karl (Carl) Vollmöller (1926?). Photog: Heinrich Gärtner, Bruno Mondi. Des: Willi A. Herrmann. Mus: Paul Dessau.
Cast: Anna May Wong (Song), Heinrich George (Jack Houben [DE vers.]; John Houben [ENG vers.]), Mary Kid (Gloria Lee), H. A. [Hans Adalbert] von Schlettow (Dimitri Alexi), Paul Hörbiger (Carletto), J. E. Herrmann (the “director”).
Dist: Südfilm A.G. (DE), Wardour Films (GB).
Rel: 21.8.1928 (Alhambra, Berlin); 19.11.1928 (Capitol Haymarket, London).
Helsinki premiere: 3 March 1929 – Olympia – Suomen Biografi Osakeyhtiö – 15435 – 2540 m.
Copy: DCP, 102', col. (from 35 mm, orig. l. 2739 m, 21 fps, toned; titles: ENG. Source: Filmmuseum Düsseldorf.
Le Giornate del Cinema Muto (GCM), Pordenone: Anna May Wong.
Musical commentary: Stephen Horne, Frank Bockius.
Viewed at Teatro Verdi with e-subtitles in Italian, 9 Oct 2024
Yiman Wang (GCM Catalog 2024): " Anna May Wong’s weeping was “famous among her colleagues. One can travel to Neubabelsberg to witness it,” writes Walter Benjamin in his article “Gespräch mit Anne [sic] May Wong: Eine Chinoiserie aus dem alten Westen” [A Conversation with Anna May Wong: A Chinoiserie from the Old West] (Die Literarische Welt, 6.7.1928). Benjamin met Wong during her initial European visit as she was finishing her first starring vehicle in Germany, Song. Die Liebe eines armen Menschenkindes (Schmutziges Geld), based on Karl Vollmöller’s script written especially for the star (shortly after, Vollmöller wrote Der blaue Engel). Co-produced with British International Pictures and mostly shot in Neubabelsberg, this was Wong’s first collaboration with Richard Eichberg, a German director known for star-making Hollywood-style genre films. Capitalizing upon what I’ve called Wong’s “ethno-cosmopolitanism” (see my book To Be an Actress. Labor and Performance in Anna May Wong’s Cross-Media World, 2024), Song contributed to the “Film Europe” project that combined European resources to make broadly appealing co-productions designed to resist Hollywood dominance."
"Wong arrived in Germany accompanied by Vollmöller in April 1928, leaving behind Hollywood, where she had won fame as “the most beautiful oriental on the screen,” but remained relegated to decorative and doomed supporting roles. Wong later commented sarcastically, “I left America because I died so often. I was killed in virtually every picture I appeared in. Pathetic dying seemed to be the best thing I did.” (Picturegoer Weekly, 17.10.1931) Commenting on Wong’s newly-minted European stardom, British writer-turned-filmmaker Oswell Blakeston wrote: “the little ex-laundry girl, ex-Hollywood actress […] had to go to Germany to be made a star, only to be Americanized, for Show Life is full of the stock movie situations punctuated by large heads of the star.” (Close Up, 12.1928)"
"Even as a star, Wong’s protagonist meets yet another gruesome death in Song (the name echoes Wong’s Chinese name Wong Liu Tsong; Wong referred to the film as “Tsong” in an 1931 interview with Ciné-Miroir, 11.1931)."
"Set in Istanbul, the film opens with beautiful stock footage. Song, “one of Fate’s castaways,” is harassed by local ruffians, and then rescued by John Houben (Jack Houben in the German version), a music-hall knife-thrower. With “the devotion of a dog and the soul of a woman” as proclaimed in the French Odéon programme (2.1930), Song clings to John, who recruits her as the human target in his knife-throwing act. John’s suspenseful to-rabid knife-throwing prompted a French reviewer to wonder how the German censor could “freely allow the expression of this sadism or recklessness.” (Maurice Mairgance, Anna May Wong Clippings, 10.1929) Yet the sado-masochistic partnership is broken when John’s old flame, the now-famous ballerina Gloria Lee (Mary Kid), comes to town, rendering Song disposable. Many twists and turns later (including Song’s fur-coated white masquerade for the temporarily blinded John), John finally recognizes the value of Song, who has ascended from the human-target-cum-hula-dancer to a glamorous dancing star. His sudden appearance startles her in the middle of her scimitar dance routine, causing her to fatally fall on the knife-studded rotating stage. She dies “beautifully” in a haloed close-up shot, tears glistening. For Blakeston (Close Up, 12.1928), this exemplified Wong’s Americanized stardom, wrought by the cameraman Heinrich Gärtner, who used white gauzes to smudge the frame and a strong spotlight to create the halo effect. Cynthia Walk, in her essay “Anna May Wong and Weimar Cinema: Orientalism in Postcolonial Germany” (in Beyond Alterity: German Encounters with Modern East Asia, 2014), discusses how the story “replicates the reassuring orientalist fantasy of a dependent and gratefully submissive East.” "
"What animated the film’s aesthetics and defied the sado-masochistic narrative was Wong’s tour-de-force performance, catapulting her to celebrity stardom in interwar Europe. German Expressionist painters Willy Jaeckel and Max Pechstein sketched her on set, and at the December 1928 Berlin artists costume ball she basked in her newfound aura, playfully posing with two German newcomers – Marlene Dietrich and Leni Riefenstahl – captured by photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt. Her star debut won positive reviews around the globe. The Bioscope (London, 19.9.1928) celebrated Wong’s “veritable triumph.” An Italian reviewer resorted to Orientalism, misidentifying Wong as “the interesting Japanese actress … with slanted eyes,” but praised her “intelligence and grace. To watch her is a joy, and so satisfying: she nobly engages art on a truly serious level, a quality only rarely found among the great screen actresses. (Cinema-teatro, 15.1.1930) Upon its 1929 release in Shanghai’s first-run Grand Theatre, Wong’s “pure artistry” was credited for making the film “one of the greatest pictures we have seen in many a long day.” (“Anna May Wong’s Starring Vehicle at Grand Theatre,” The China Press, 29.3.1929)"
"Propelled by this resoundingly successful “Film Europe” project, Wong signed an 18-month contract with British International Pictures for four films (Variety, 31.10.1928), while venturing into the London legitimate theatre and onto the Viennese stage, emerging as “the most popular stage star in years.” (Evening Star [Washington, D.C.], 28.9.1930)"
"The present restoration from Filmmuseum Düsseldorf is derived from the best surviving material available. The main sources are an original nitrate negative from the British Film Institute (2301 m), and a contemporary nitrate print from the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia (2556 m), both with English intertitles. The version screening at the Giornate is the English language one. For the German-language version, intertitles have been recreated based on the censorship cards kept at
the Bundesarchiv. The sepia tinting is based on the Australian distribution print." – Yiman Wang
AA: Anna May Wong is luminous in Song, in which she gives a marvellous and deeply moving performance. The director Richard Eichberg in this film, considered perhaps his best, is very competent indeed, but little more than that. Three times Anna May Wong had a great director - Raoul Walsh in The Thief of Bagdad, Herbert Brenon in Peter Pan (she was Tiger Lily) and Josef von Sternberg in The Shanghai Express - and she also had good ones like Chester M. Franklin in The Toll of the Sea and E. A. Dupont in Piccadilly - but Richard Eichberg, who directed her in Song and Grossstadtschmetterling is not in their class. Still Song is very much worth seeing because we can enjoy a great star in a memorable role.
The screenplay by Adolf Lantz and Helen Gosewisch is heart-breaking in its sado-masochism. Acts of brutal violence display racism and misogyny of the most atrocious kind. Willi A. Hermann as art director creates a vivid and exciting world of the music hall. The cinematography by Heinrich Gärtner and Bruno Mondi is powerful and expressive in the best Weimar mode. The sabre dances and knife-throwing numbers are dangerous and thrilling. But if we compare Song with E. A. Dupont's Varieté and Josef von Sternberg's Der Blaue Engel, we notice that something is missing inside, an inner compelling urge, and unfortunately Song remains too much on a surface level of the decorative and sensational.
Song is essential viewing from the viewpoint of Anna May Wong and the complexities of Orientalism in the history of the cinema. We see the great talent and lament a great unfulfilled potential.
The restoration by Filmmuseum Düsseldorf is wonderful. It does justice to the film's visual glory and the radiation of its stars, also including Heinrich George at the height of his powers. I enjoyed the subtle definition of light and the sepia toning.
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