Hollywood Chinese

Director: Arthur Dong
Starring: Nancy Kwan, Joan Chen, Tsai Chin, James Hong, Christopher Lee, Justin Lin

(Writing from TIFF, where he brought his film for its premiere, Arthur Dong shares with MPM the personal story behind the film.)

In-a-nutshell:
With Chinese the largest visible minority in Canada, it is not too surprising that the TIFF programmers chose to schedule Hollywood Chinese in this year's festival. From the unfamiliar fame of Anna May Wong (The Toll of the Sea, Shanghai Express), to her perceived snubbing as the lead in The Good Earth, Dong's documentary simmers amidst old-Hollywood's promotion teams serving up top-billing to Caucasian stars in "yellow-face" in films promoted by teams pulling Chinese oxen through San Francisco's streets inhabited by white women in silk dresses - in order to appeal to the all-white audiences inhabiting the theaters of the day.

Dong's subjects suitably reveal the stereotypes to which they surrendered "just to pay the bills" and contemplate the Chinese characters portrayed by Agnes Moorhead, Tony Randall, Sydney Toler, Orland Winter, Boris Karloff, John Wayne and Katherine Hepburn. 

The team of Chinese American actors assembled deliberate the upside and downside of the Charlie Chan (Chan was white, but his first son was Chinese and successful) and Fu Manchu (a torture master yet highly educated) franchises, and take turns recalling the diction lessons necessary to learn the Confucian "Fortune Cookie" conversations that proliferated a humiliating pidgin English never spoken by these actors in real life. Nancy Kwan's success as the first Chinese American leading lady not bound to yellow roles also came at a price, the covers of Life and Esquire earned only after taking on the portrayal of a prostitute in The World of Suzie Wong. However, as often as Kwan or Lisa Lu recall the typecasting of Asian American actresses as hookers and barmaids, anyone with a hint of acting training can recall those classes when any actress of any nationality complained of the limited roles written for women generally.

The interesting and original elements exposed by Hollywood Chinese focused on BD Wong's and David Henry Hwang's exploration and admission of their own innate feelings of femininity as Asian American males (compared to Chinese stars who come to America as heroes), and the degradation dealt to Chinese actors in performing their portrayals of Japanese (especially during the Japanese internment), all the while well-aware of what the Japanese had done to the Chinese not too many years prior in Nanking.

Dong balances the documentary with a look at the magical milestones - including Rodgers and Hammerstein's Flower Drum Song and the career of cinematographer James Wong Howe. Howe's work on The Thin Man, Yankee Doodle Dandy, Sweet Smell of Success, Funny Lady, Hud and The Prisoner of Zenda (to name a few) was not just parochial and patriotic, but pioneering. Quick check-ins on the work of Wayne Wang (Chan is Missing) and Amy Tan (The Joy Luck Club) transition us through to today's generation, represented by Justin Lin (Better Luck Tomorrow, Finishing the Game), who, despite early success at Sundance while still at school, still feels trapped between continents.

In a short amount of time, Dong manages to raise many important (and, for many, novel) topics for consideration, and to bring awareness to the rich history the Chinese brought to our silver screen. That every topic is treated cursorily serves well to raise all the issues for debate, but avoids delivering any determination on the discourse. Hopefully, the film festival setting for the film's "Real to Reel" release will provide the right environment for an engaging interaction in the audience on everything from image to internment, yesteryear, yellow-face and the freedom of a future yet to appear.

In Hollywood Chinese, Christopher Lee states, "Films can be historical documents and reflections of the times we live in, and can clearly address the evils of the world." Yes, they can, but whether they're given the opportunity to do so is another matter.