MOVIE OF THE DAY: "OLD SAN FRANCISCO" (1927)

What with COVID arousing anti-Chinese sentiment in some quarters, it's interesting to look back to remind ourselves this is nothing new. The 1927 silent movie Old San Francisco -- Warner Brothers' fifth release with a synchronized score and sound effects -- takes it one step further, essentially comparing them to vampires. See, things could be worse!

The year is 1906. Don Hernandez de Vasquez lives on his family estate in San Francisco with his granddaughter Dolores. Long past its glory days, the homestead has come under the scrutiny of land developer Chris Buckwell. 

Buckwell, highly-regarded by the business community, is hiding a secret: he's Chinese! Or, as the subtitles insist on referring to him, a Mongol (because it sounds more sinister). Buckwell is able to pass for white because he's played by Warner Oland, the Swedish-born actor who, some years later, would gain his greatest fame as Charlie Chan. 

Don Vasquez wonders why his granddaughter
looks so darned white.

Buckwell's reps, Michael Brandon and Terrence O'Shaughnessy, get nowhere with Vasquez sales-wise. But Terrence falls hard and fast for the comely Dolores, played by the homonynic Dolores Costello.

The usual mix-ups and misunderstandings occur during their courtship, allowing Blackwell to (forcefully) make his move on Dolores -- not for his own pleasure, but to sell her to a Chinatown pimp who intends on shipping her back to the old country. But you don't really think things will turn out that way, do you? 

One of Old San Francisco's more subtle moments.

There wouldn't be much reason to watch Old San Francisco if not for the character of Chris Buckwell, because it provides fascinating insight to Hollywood's (and America's) view of Chinese immigrants. 

And that regard is low. Real low. Like Grand Canyon low. While the average Chinatown resident here is regarded with, at best, a vague, confused fascination (like a wild animal who's been trained to ride a tricycle), Buckwell is, from the get-go, portrayed as the personification of evil. 

File under "Typical silent movie villain." 

While evil landowners were nothing new in movies by 1927 -- hell, every other Western had them -- they were just your regular bad guys (i.e., white). In Old San Francisco, Buckwell being Chinese elevates him to a first class villain. Passing himself off as white? Now we're talking pure blackguard.

But Chinese and manhandling the Spanish-but-white-looking virgin Dolores? Get the noose ready, boys!

Almost as bad as his wanton desires is Buckwell's religion. Ducking into his basement after a business meeting, he dons a robe and skullcap, and kneels before a giant statue of a Chinese deity. Lighting several tall sticks of incense, Buckwell prays for forgiveness for selling out his people to the Chinatown criminal underworld. At least he's sorry.

"And another thing, you could stand to lose 20 pounds!"

You'll never guess what else Buckwell keeps down there. A dwarf named Chang Lu -- and he's locked in a cage! Buckwell must enjoy being reminded what a scumbag he is, because the only function Chang Lu serves is to endlessly taunt him. "What fresh deed of evil is on your vile soul?" Chang inquires not unreasonably. "Not all the incense of the Indies will blot your sins from the eyes of heaven." I would have said, "You stink on ice!" but there's very little drama in that.

In Sweden, they cut to the chase and
called it Mongolians.

Before going further, it would be thoughtless not to add that Lu Chang is played by Angelo Rossitto, one of the stars of another Fisheye movie, Scared to Death, although he's most famous for his role in Freaks. Unless you're a fan of contemporary cinema. Then you'd definitely recognize him as The Master in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome -- in 1985! That's a long career for a little guy.

But is there anything worse than attempting to defile the virginal Dolores Vasquez? Yes: blasphemy. Buckwell drops by the Vasquez ranch allegedly to pray at their shrine of Jesus. But while Dolores and granddad watch from behind in admiration, we see Buckwell himself fumbling with the sign of the cross, a look of confusion and disgust on his face. 

The Vasquezes aren't fooled for long. When Don goes into town on business, Blackwell returns to have his way with Dolores. Interrupted by the unexpected return of her grandfather and Terrence O'Shaughnessy (you remember him, right?), Blackwell threatens revenge. 

And don't wave garlic in front of him, either.

As Dolores faces him down, Buckwell steps near the shrine -- and recoils in horror, covering his face in Dracula fashion with his cape. Lowering it a moment later, Buckwell, to Dolores' horror, now appears 100% Chinese for the first time, his sneering mouth ready to take a bite of her. Or, as the subtitle puts it, "In the awful light of an outraged, wrathful Christian God, the heathen soul of the Mongol stood revealed."  

It's a staggeringly racist, shocking, bizarre moment. Yet I don't care how woke you are, when Buckwell drops his cape, the effect is so startling that your breath gets caught in your throat. Audiences watching it on a big movie screen nearly a century ago were probably ready to burn down their local Chinatown. 

Chinese woman; Swedish man playing Chinese passing himself off as
white; white woman of Irish descent playing Spanish. The magic of
the movies!

To add insult to ridiculous injury is that the only real Chinese actor who has something approaching a major role in Old San Francisco, Anna May Wong, plays Buckwell's stooge. 

Wong's most important job here is to help her boss kidnap Dolores in order to sell her into prostitution. Judging by her sullen expression, she appears to be aware of being forced into a similar situation.


The race baiting/blasphemy angle is even more wacky when you remember that Warner Brothers, like the other major studios, was run by Jews who played up Christianity as if at gunpoint. A decade earlier, the villain would likely have been a Spaniard, instead of a heroic figure like he is here. 

Dolores looks totally into this guy.

And a decade before that, an Irishman like O'Shaughnessy would have been played strictly for boneheaded laughs. Even here, the Vitaphone Orchestra plays a rip-off of "Believe Me If All Those Endearing Young Charms" whenever he enters a scene, just to remind you of his nationality. 

Come to think of it, there's absolutely no reason to make his character Irish other than to justify his courtship of a Spanish woman. After all, he isn't American white. He's a foreigner, like her. 

There goes the neighborhood.

Old San Francisco, then, is not headed for the Brotherhood Hall of Fame. Its casual -- make that defiant -- racism, along with its head-clobbering Christian agitprop, would likely cause demands for it to be disappeared like Disney's Song of the South if it were better known. It is, then, a textbook example of relative obscurity besting negative fame. 

Plus, Old San Francisco's climax provides the most hilariously preposterous cause of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake ever suggested. Without going into detail, it has nothing to do with fault lines. Except those, perhaps, around Warner Oland's evil eyes.

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