Review of Drifting

Watched "Drifting" (1923) with Priscilla Dean, Matt Moore, Wallace Beery, J. Farrell MacDonald, Anna May Wong, Rose Dione, Edna Tichenor, William V. Mong, Bruce Guerin, and others. My print is the new Blu-Ray release from Kino Lorber, and it is a nice clean and clear copy pretty much throughout. The print runs 84 minutes according to the back cover of the Blu-Ray, even though the IMDb notes a 70 minute running time. The print seemed wholly accurate at 84 minutes. This one takes place in Shanghai where a group of opium growers, another of opium smugglers and sellers (to which Dean and Beery belong), and a government agent (Moore) in the guise (or disguise) of a mining engineer who's trying to rid the opium problem from Shanghai, all are playing out the plot in a very dangerous cat-and-mouse game. Dean falls in love eventually with Moore and her lack of compunction shifts... The finale is a rip-rousing battle scene with fire and fights and the army and, and, and... The scene of the village on fire and all the fighting occurring is extremely well staged, fairly long, too, so the climax is the kind of thing that in 1923 must have been heart-pounding to an audience. All the time, young Anna May Wong, playing the daughter of a smuggler, and who's fallen in love with Moore also, is compounding the plot time after time with her presence. Her death near the end, according to one contemporaneous critic at the film's release, was considered the high point of the film. She's supposedly 15 in the film (she was only 18 in real life), and her histrionics are so natural as to make the viewer feel she is genuinely the part. The film is very exciting, especially from the beginning of the second half, though the exposition is well done. There are some plot strings that are left to dangle at the end which I found slightly disconcerting, but overall I really enjoyed the film and would definitely watch this one again soon. Discovering Priscilla Dean in her early films has been rather a revelation. She's SO good at being bad. There's an attitude about her that fits her looks at that time...and it plays on film in a wondrous manner. Of course, Beery in these early days was almost never a good guy in features. When he crooks that eye of his and looks like the snake he's playing, he's fierce. Moore is a little less, but he's still fine here. Kept reminding me of John Howard playing Bulldog Drummond in the 30s. This new release is very highly recommended.