Mon 7 Jul 2014
A Movie Review by Dan Stumpf: THE HATCHET MAN (1932).
Posted by Steve under Films: Drama/Romance[3] Comments
THE HATCHET MAN. First National Pictures / Warner Brothers, 1932. Also released as The Honorable Mr. Wong. Edward G. Robinson, Loretta Young, Dudley Digges, Leslie Fenton, Edmund Breese, Tully Marshall, J. Carroll Naish. Director: William A. Wellman.
Recently watched: The Hatchet Man, a Warners thing from 1932 with Edward G. Robinson as a respected Chinese Executioner working for the Tong in San Francisco. When he’s ordered to kill his best friend (played with slanty eye and lilting diphthong by Irishman J. Carroll Naish), he promises to look after his buddy’s daughter, and see that he never causes her any unhappiness… According to custom, this also includes marrying her.
Time passes. And it passes quickly, because this is a Warners film, and only runs 74 minutes anyway. The daughter grows up to be a very fetching Chinese-American (played by Loretta Young?!) who obligingly marries Robinson — now a prosperous businessman — because he’s nice to her and her father would have wished it.
She predictably falls for a flashy Chinese gangster about five minutes later, but when Eddie discovers them together he recalls his promise to Naish and breaks Custom by not killing them both. Instead, he allows them to go off together, a move that causes him serious loss of face in the community and eventual financial ruin.
More time passes. Even quicker. Robinson, now a migrant field hand, gets word that Loretta and her new husband were deported to China, where he has put her to work in a brothel.
Remembering his vow still, he makes his way to China for a richly satisfying ending that somehow manages to be melodramatic and cynical at the same time.
This was directed by William Wellman at his tough best, and a real treat.
July 7th, 2014 at 1:08 pm
In 1930 Frank Lloyd made a film called Son of the Gods, based on a Rex Beach novel and starring Richard Barthelmess and Constance Bennett. the hero is portrayed as Chinese, but wins the girl anyway when it is revealed he isn’t oriental but white, only dressed as …ah, it is all just nuts. And, I might extend that view to The Hatchet Man.
July 7th, 2014 at 2:20 pm
As sheer melodrama this is hard to beat, and I love the ending. Of course the Anglo actors as Chinese is an old tradition, and actors like Richard Loo and Philip Ahn were still cast as Japanese even after the war.
Can’t disagree with Barry that it is a bit nuts, but melodrama should be, and the ending is beautifully filmed by Wellman.
Thinking of Loretta Young as ‘Loretta Young’ it is always a bit of a shock to go back and see her in films like this, Beau Ideal, or Bulldog Drummond Strikes Back, rather like those exotic types Myrna Loy played early on.
Even dealing with tongs and hatchet men, this one was a little more friendly to the Chinese than most of the era. It’s not until Pearl Buck that we really see ordinary human Chinese characters as in The Good Earth, before that it was either Charlie Chan or Sax Rohmer.
July 7th, 2014 at 2:47 pm
Dan, you expressed my sentiments exactly. The film is a visual treat and like David, I love the ending.