A surprisingly tense crime drama carried by some excellent performances from Priscilla Dean and Lon Chaney and some great filmmaking from Tod Browning. I was initially taken aback with the prevalent use of Chinese stereotypes and general "orientalism" often found in films of this period, and the resulting use of yellow face, but luckily this largely cringey aspect of the film is mostly limited to a strange exoticistic aesthetic flair. That's not an excuse or a justification, just reconciling the fact there is so much worse in this era of American film. It's still cringey.
A surprisingly tense crime drama carried by some excellent performances from Priscilla Dean and Lon Chaney and some great filmmaking from Tod Browning. I was initially taken aback with the prevalent use of Chinese stereotypes and general "orientalism" often found in films of this period, and the resulting use of yellow face, but luckily this largely cringey aspect of the film is mostly limited to a strange exoticistic aesthetic flair. That's not an excuse or a justification, just reconciling the fact there is so much worse in this era of American film. It's still cringey.
