The Toll of the Sea
1923·54 min·US
Director: Chester M. Franklin
DramaRomance
A landmark film on multiple fronts: the first feature shot entirely in two-color Technicolor, and the first Hollywood film to star an Asian American actress in the lead. Anna May Wong, just seventeen, plays Lotus Flower, a young Chinese woman who rescues an American sailor washed up on the shore and falls in love with him — with devastating consequences. The story is a reworking of Madame Butterfly, and its tragic trajectory is both deeply moving and painfully illustrative of the limited roles Hollywood offered Asian actresses: Wong would spend her entire career fighting the system that discovered her here. But her performance is extraordinary — natural, emotionally transparent, and heartbreaking — and the Technicolor photography gives the film an ethereal, hand-tinted beauty unlike anything else from the period.
A landmark film on multiple fronts: the first feature shot entirely in two-color Technicolor, and the first Hollywood film to star an Asian American actress in the lead. Anna May Wong, just seventeen, plays Lotus Flower, a young Chinese woman who rescues an American sailor washed up on the shore and falls in love with him — with devastating consequences. The story is a reworking of Madame Butterfly, and its tragic trajectory is both deeply moving and painfully illustrative of the limited roles Hollywood offered Asian actresses: Wong would spend her entire career fighting the system that discovered her here. But her performance is extraordinary — natural, emotionally transparent, and heartbreaking — and the Technicolor photography gives the film an ethereal, hand-tinted beauty unlike anything else from the period.
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Cast
Crew
J.A. Ball
cinematographer
Frances Marion
writer
