Drifting (2015 restoration George Eastman Museum)

Tod Browning: Drifting (US 1923). Priscilla Dean (Cassie Cook).

Tod Browning: Drifting (US 1923). Anna May Wong (Rose Li). Photo: La Cinémathèque française.

La Marchande de rêves.

US © 1923 Universal Pictures.

Tod Browning / États-Unis / 1923 / 70 min / DCP / VOSTF

D'après la pièce La Marchande de rêves de Daisy H. Andrews et John Colton.

Avec Wallace Beery, Priscilla Dean, Matt Moore, Anna May Wong.

Not released in Finland or Sweden.

Grand piano: Adrien Avezard (classe d'improvisation de Jean-François Zygel)

Vu samedi 26 avril 2025, La Cinémathèque française, Rétrospective Anna May Wong, Salle Georges Franju, 51 Rue de Bercy, 75012 Paris, M° Bercy Lignes 14, 6

La Cinémathèque française: "Shanghai. Une Américaine, complice d'un trafic d'opium, tombe amoureuse du policier infiltré chargé de la surveiller. L'avant-dernière collaboration entre Tod Browning et son actrice fétiche, Priscilla Dean, vaut pour son montage alterné, son final haletant, et surtout Anna May Wong, qui, malgré un rôle toujours proche du cliché, crève l'écran. Tandis que la liaison entre l'actrice et le cinéaste fait scandale : Browning est renvoyé de chez Universal."

AA: Priscilla Dean was a big star of the silent cinema. Her breakthrough took place in the 1910s when women were driving forces in big action adventure movies. Tod Browning had already favoured women protagonists in films starring Mabel Taliaferro and Edith Storey before he collaborated for the first time with Priscilla Dean in Which Woman? (1918). Both Dean and Browning had started their film careers with D. W. Griffith. Drifting was their eighth and penultimate collaboration. Priscilla Dean's appearance differs from movie star looks of later times. Without being conventionally beautiful she is a magnetic presence. 

Anna May Wong, at 18, appears in her second collaboration with Tod Browning. Hers is the second female lead, Rose Li, infatuated with Captain Arthur Jarvis (Matt Moore). The role has been compared with Madame Butterfly, but I think it is something different, closer to Violine Fleuri (Annabella) in Napoléon vu par Abel Gance. An unrequited love of a pure soul, as different from the compromised ones, Cassie Cook (Priscilla Dean) and Joséphine de Beauharnais (Gina Manès) respectively. This part Anna May Wong conveys beautifully. I am also reminded of Letter from an Unknown Woman. Tod Browning reportedly had to quit Universal because of his extramarital affair with Anna May Wong.

Drifting is Orientalism rampant, a potboiler with Yellow Peril cliches and zero patience for cultural sensitivity. As a piece of sensationalist action it is grandiose, well staged and exciting. The mise-en-scène is striking, the turning points and revelations are effective, the village atmosphere is vivid, the children are appealing, and the villain flavours his comments with Chinese proverbs. The crescendo towards the final conflagration is terrific.

A well made restoration from challenging materials by George Eastman Museum. I enjoyed the passages with subtle sepia toning.

...

LE GIORNATE DEL CINEMA MUTO 2015: REDISCOVERIES AND RESTORATIONS

DRIFTING

(La perduta di Shanghai)

Country USA

Release Date  26 August

Production Co.  Universal Pictures

Director Tod Browning

DCP

82'

Archive Source  George Eastman House, Rochester, NY

   

Print Notes  orig. l: 7,394 ft (7 rl.) (from 35 mm), (transferred at 20 fps) col. (tinted); titles: ENG

Cast: Priscilla Dean (Cassie Cook; Lucille Preston), Matt Moore (Capt. Arthur Jarvis), Wallace Beery (Jules Repin), J. Farrell MacDonald (Murphy), Rose Dione (Madame Polly Voo), William V. Mong (Dr. Li), Anna May Wong (Rose Li), Bruce Guerin (Billy Hepburn), Marie De Albert (Mrs. Hepburn), William Moran (Mr. Hepburn), Frank Lanning (Chang Wang).

Other credits: scen: Tod Browning, A. P. Younger, from the play by John Colton & Daisy H. Andrews (1910); titles: Gardner Bradford; ph: William Fildew; ed: Errol Taggart

première: 19.8.1923, New York

Restored 2015.

 

Jared Case (GCM 2015 Program Notes): "Drifting was Tod Browning’s last silent film at Universal. The scenario was based on a stage play written in 1910 by Daisy Andrews and John Colton, which enjoyed a revival in a 1922 New York production starring Alice Brady. Universal bought the rights later that year and assigned the film to Browning, as another pairing with his frequent star Priscilla Dean (Under Two Flags, White Tiger). The narrative follows Cassie Cook, an American heavily involved in the Chinese opium trade, who is engaged in an uneasy alliance with her rival, Jules Repin. When she receives an erroneous tip on a horse race that she passes on to Repin, both find themselves destitute, and Cassie has her stolen clothes ripped off her. Repin trafficks the drug from the town of Hang Chow, and the desperate duo travel there to investigate the problems at the source of their supply. Arthur Jarvis, a government agent undercover as a mining engineer in Hang Chow, intends to break the opium ring, and seizes much of the drug, causing a bottleneck in the supply. Cassie, posing as a novelist, ingratiates herself with Jarvis and manages to steal a government file from his office. Meanwhile, Repin works with his source, Dr. Li (whose daughter Rose is in love with Jarvis), to recruit the hill dwellers of the surrounding area to invade the town and capture the supply for themselves."

"It was well-publicized in early 1923 that Dean was unhappy with the immorality of the character she would portray, though Universal downplayed the situation and it seemed to be quickly resolved. This may have something to do with the relative sanitization of the character in comparison to the stage play. Originally, Cassie was a “lady of easy virtue” with opportunistic instincts, which made her reformation through love all the more striking and dramatic. After nine films with Dean at Universal, Browning moved on to M-G-M for most of the remainder of his silent films, including his productive period with Lon Chaney. Dean also soon left Universal, and continued to work for Hunt Stromberg and Metropolitan in silent films, but struggled to find work in the sound era, and ended her career in 1932."

"Never a lost film, but long unavailable, Drifting has been reconstructed by the Moving Image Department of George Eastman House thanks to the co-operation of MaNDA (Magyar Nemzeti Digitális Archívum és Filmintézet) – Hungarian National Digital Archive and Film Institute, Gosfilmofond of Russia, and the National Film Preservation Foundation. A tinted nitrate print donated to George Eastman House in 1991 by the Czech National Film Archive was the starting point for this reconstruction. In the release print from Prague, all the original English titles had been replaced by Czech titles. The search for a script or continuity proved fruitless, and 2011 Selznick School student Zuzana Zabkova translated the Czech text in order to construct new English titles. These were edited into the body of the film. This version was still a reel short of the original 1923 release, and the end of the film was so fragmented that it was nearly impossible to follow its action. In 2012, George Eastman House was able to obtain elements of the film held by Gosfilmofond and MaNDA. All the elements were digitally scanned and compared with the Czech nitrate. The analysis revealed that all three prints were incomplete, but when combined produced the most complete version of Drifting that could be achieved from the extant material. The tinting of this version replicates the colors found in the Czech nitrate print." – Jared Case