Schede film/Programme Notes
Introduzione/Introduction
HIS BIRTHRIGHT (Haworth, US 1918)
Regia/dir: William Worthington; soggetto/story: Sessue Hayakawa, et al.; f./ph:Robert Newhard; cast: Sessue Hayakawa (Yukio), Marian Sais (Edna), Howard Davis (John Milton), Mary Anderson (Helen Milton), Saki San (Tsuru Aoki); data uscita/released: 1?/8?.9.1918; fonte copia/print source: Nederlands Filmuseum, Amsterdam.
After two years of stardom at the Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Company, Sessue Hayakawa established his own production company, the Haworth Pictures Corporation, in March 1918. Already in 1916, Hayakawa told Photoplay that he was not satisfied with his roles in the films in which he had already appeared. He said, “Such roles [in such films as The Wrath of the Gods (1914) and The Cheat (1915)] are not true to our Japanese nature…. They are false and give people a wrong idea of us. I wish to make a characterization which shall reveal us as we really are.”In fact, at the launching of Haworth, Hayakawa announced that he would “produce eight films each year, and all of them would have plots dealing with Japanese subject matters,” and that he would send his crew to shoot actual images of Japan. (The surviving print of His Birthright opens with a shot on the deck of a boat, but originally, according to the Japanese film trade journal Kinema Junpo, the first shot of His Birthright was Mt. Fuji, and the story started at Port Uraga in Japan, where Commodore Matthew Perry arrived in the 1850s. In this extant print, there are only three shots that are supposedly set in Japan, all of which appear in flashbacks. Probably, these three remaining shots were not shot in Japan but in Los Angeles, because actress Tsuru Aoki, Hayakawa’s real-life wife, appears in these shots, and there is no record that Aoki went back to Japan for the filming of His Birthright.)
Nevertheless, it is doubtful that Hayakawa seriously wanted to make films that would portray the authentic Japan. Hayakawa pragmatically realized that too faithful an adherence to Japanese realities might not be pleasingly exotic to American audiences. The name of Hayakawa’s company, Haworth, symbolizes the careful mediation between his Americanized star image and his Japanese national identity to reestablish his popularity, which cut across racial lines. No record is left concerning the details of the naming his company, but the Anglo-Saxon name “Haworth” seems to be the combination of “Ha” from “Hayakawa” and “worth” from William Worthington, who was Hayakawa’s right-hand man and directed 12 of the new company’s first 13 Hayakawa vehicles.
His Birthright, the first Haworth production, whose original story was written by Hayakawa, utilizes the archetypal narrative of Madame Butterfly, which the Lasky company often referred to in Hayakawa star vehicles. In fact, His Birthright was originally entitled “Butterfly’s Son”, evoking the sense of a sequel to Madame Butterfly. More than anything else, His Birthright uses one of the most prominent devices the Lasky company used to form Hayakawa’s star image: the Americanization of immigrants. His Birthright depicts how Hayakawa’s character Americanizes himself.
In His Birthright, Yukio, born of a Japanese mother and an American father, Lieutenant John Milton of the U.S. Navy, has been raised in a Japanese fishing village by his mother’s servant. When he turns 21, he learns that his mother, brokenhearted at the desertion of her husband, stabbed herself to death while he was still a baby. He travels to America as a cabin boy to take revenge on his father. He confides his intentions to Edna, a German spy. She persuades Yukio to steal important documents from his father, in return for which she promises her love. When he learns that her professed love was false, Yukio’s sense of honor leads him to fight the German spies. Realizing that his father has always loved his mother, Yukio abandons his ideas of revenge and determines to enlist in the service of America.
By the end of His Birthright, Yukio becomes a loyal son of America. The Exhibitor’s Trade Review noted, “The birth of patriotism in the heart of the young Japanese boy is graphically pictured.” When Yukio attacks the female German spy at the climax, he looks directly at the camera in a medium close-up and points with his right forefinger. Frowning a little, Yukio exactly copies the famous pose of Uncle Sam in the patriotic World War I recruiting posters of the day, with their appeal “I Want YOU for U.S. Army”. In this shot, the make-up, the lighting, and the performance style all function to emphasize Yukio’s Americanization. Yukio’s face looks really white in the strong key-lighting, with white make-up. In the final scene, Yukio hears something, stands up from his working desk, and walks to a window. He moves his hands in rhythm with the music he hears: the U.S. Navy march. In the final spoken title, in which a picture of an American soldier and a Japanese soldier saluting each other in front of their national flags is drawn, Yukio states, “I am willing to give my life for the Stars and Stripes – your country – OUR country.” Yukio’s white American father then embraces his son, as if blessing him as a completely Americanized man. – Daisuke Miyao
THE COURAGEOUS COWARD (Haworth, US 1919)
Regia/dir: William Worthington; cast: Sessue Hayakawa (Suki), Tsuru Aoki (Rei), Toyo Fujita (Tangi), George Hernandez (Big Bill Kirby), Francis J. McDonald (Tom Kirby); data uscita/released: 14.4.1919; fonte copia/print source: Nederlands Filmuseum, Amsterdam.
According to Moving Picture World, in The Courageous Coward, Suki, a young American-born Japanese law student, succeeds in American sports and in American society. His girlfriend Rei, who is from Japan, decides to convert herself into an up-to-date American girl to please Suki. Suki, who still worships the customs of his country, is disappointed in Rei’s change, and in her being escorted by Tom Kirby, the son of a rich politician, Big Bill Kirby. Later, Tom kills one of his father’s gambling house servants. Suki, now a district attorney, finds himself confronted with Tom’s confession, while he is prosecuting the wrong man. To keep Tom’s secret for Rei’s sake, and not to execute the wrong man, Suki allows himself to be displaced as district attorney and branded a coward. Finally, Tom makes a public confession, and Suki is saved from disgrace.
Since Haworth was an independent production company, it required a dependable distributor that would secure exhibitors to show its films. Haworth contracted with the Robertson-Cole Distributing Corporation, a new face in the film distributing business. The English-born Harry F. Robertson and the American Rufus Sidman Cole formed Robertson-Cole as an import-export firm in 1918. For them, the film business was originally a sideline to that of automobiles and tea. In October 1919, Robertson-Cole restructured its distributing system and expanded its influence in the film distributing business. Robertson-Cole continued to distribute Haworth films through 1920, when Haworth was integrated into Robertson-Cole, which by then had also begun producing films. As Robertson-Cole rapidly expanded its position in the film distribution and production businesses, it began to have a stronger influence on Haworth films, and respectively, Hayakawa started to lose control over his company.
Especially after The Courageous Coward, Hayakawa’s films and his star image began to repeat the audience-tested images that had been so successfully formulated at the Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Company, employing such standardized motifs and characterizations as unconquerable racial differences and self-sacrifice for white women. In this manner, Hayakawa followed Robertson-Cole’s strategy of standardizing his star vehicles based on a stereotypically orientalist imagination of Japan and Asia.
A reviewer at Wid’s Daily criticized His Birthright by noting that the film was “carefully produced as to characterizations and atmosphere but is held down by much unnecessary detail and painfully slow tempo”. The “unnecessary detail and painfully slow tempo” were possibly caused by the film’s too-serious attempt to “do justice to real Japanese character”. Too much emphasis on detailed Japanese traits might not have appealed to mainstream American audiences. For instance, Wid’s Daily questioned Hayakawa’s stardom in terms of his nationality, in January 1919: “Sessue Hayakawa is a difficult star to fit with screen material. So many things are of necessity eliminated, for social or political reasons, that he is fortunate when a story of good quality and free from anything likely to give offense comes his way.” It was even reported in Photoplay Journal in 1919 that “The Great Sessue Hayakawa Has Not Been So Successful Since He Left Lasky.” These questionings of his popularity made Hayakawa anxious about his appeal to American audiences. Under such conditions, he was willing to fully utilize the motifs and characterizations that had popularized him at Lasky. Hayakawa’s compromise paid off immediately. Moving Picture World reported on 26 April 1919 that The Courageous Coward “met instantaneous success” and “Hayakawa’s popularity grows apace”.
Also of note in The Courageous Coward is the appearance, in a supporting role, of Japanese actor Toyo Fujita. Hayakawa began his acting career at Fujita’s stage company in Little Tokyo, Los Angeles, around 1913. It is said that Thomas H. Ince saw Hayakawa’s performance there as the protagonist in a mystery drama, The Typhoon, and hired him for the New York Motion Picture Company. – Daisuke Miyao
THE MAN BENEATH (Haworth, US 1919)
Regia/dir: William Worthington; scen: L.V. Jefferson; f./ph: Frank D. Williams; cast: Sessue Hayakawa (Dr. Ashuter), Helen Jerome Eddy (Kate Erskine), Pauline Curley (Mary Erskine), Jack Gilbert (James Bassett), Fannie Midgrey (servant), Fontaine La Rue (Countess Pepita Loronzo), Wedgewood Howell (François); data uscita/released: 6.7.1919; fonte copia/print source: Nederlands Filmuseum, Amsterdam.
The Man Beneath is a story of “the tragic situation created by a race barrier blocking the gates of love,” according to Margaret I. MacDonald of Moving Picture World. Hayakawa plays Dr. Ashuter, a young and successful Hindu scientist at a university in Scotland. Ashuter confesses his love to Kate, a white woman, on a beautifully moonlit terrace. Even though Kate regards Ashuter as a great scientist, she refuses his love because of their racial differences. He looks into a mirror and desperately curses the color of his skin. When Bassett, Ashuter’s college friend, comes to seek his help against the murderous Black Hand secret society, he protects him with his secret scientific formula. Safely returning Bassett to his fiancée Mary, Kate’s younger sister, Ashuter bids another farewell to Kate. The power of Hayakawa’s eyes in this performance is continually displayed in close-ups throughout the narrative of the film.
WithThe Man Beneath, trade journals stopped calling Hayakawa vehicles “Haworth Productions” and identified them as a “Robertson-Cole feature” or as films “released by Robertson-Cole”. In this, his eighth film at Haworth, Hayakawa decided to play non-Japanese roles again. At Lasky, Hayakawa had played seven non-Japanese leading roles: two Indians, two Hawaiians, a Mexican, an Arab, and a Chinese. At Haworth, he did not play a non-Japanese role until The Man Beneath. A one-page ad for The Man Beneath in trade journals emphasized the strange oriental atmosphere of the film, which is a mixture of Japan and India. The ad had a close-up drawing of Hayakawa’s head, wearing an Indian-looking turban, in front of a drawing of Mt. Fuji (which does not appear in the actual film), the Moon, the sea, and a plum tree. Hayakawa’s choice resulted in the blurring of national boundaries and cultural differences among Asian countries. It helped to form a collective and imaginary space called “the Orient” or “Asia”, and strengthened the orientalist mode of representing Asian people in the 1920s. Even so, Wid’s Daily praised this Hayakawa role as “the best in his recent films” and “the sort of stuff the women like to see the Japanese star do”.Motion Picture News stated, “Hayakawa is far too versatile to confine his work to the portrayal of Japanese roles only.” After The Man Beneath, until he left Hollywood in 1922, Hayakawa played 12 more non-Japanese roles, and only 4 Japanese ones. Robertson-Cole’s strategy to revitalize Hayakawa’s popularity was successful. Moving Picture World noted on 13 December 1919 that in the course of that year Hayakawa had “steadily advanced in popularity.” On 31 January 1920, Moving Picture World reported, “So overwhelmingly [sic] has been his success that Hayakawa’s name is used in lights at almost every first-run house in the United States. On account of this enviable record, many of the best known exhibitors have contracted for every picture turned out by Hayakawa for Robertson-Cole.” – Daisuke Miyao
