User Reviews

This is a very early American film starring Japanese film star, Sessue Hayakawa. He plays a Japanese counter-spy who is trying to determine who in the US military is sending secrets to the Germans. As you may know, Japan was actually pro-Allied in WWI and this film reflects this--showing the Japanese as good people and pro-USA! The secrets are coming out of a small office and the Japanese don't know if the spy is the American officer in charge or his staff. It turns out that one of the spies is a secretary whose brother is a German soldier and the other is the trusted doctor who is a 100% evil guy working to aid the Kaiser. The American officer seems oblivious that secrets concerning a convoy are being leaked out of his office.

So far in the film, I would have given the movie a score of perhaps 9. It was an excellent pro-America propaganda piece and was very effectively written for the time period it was made. However, at the very end, the movie gets pretty schmaltzy and stupid. Out of nowhere, the good and loyal Japanese counter-spy decides to let the secretary go if she agrees to marry him and go back to Japan with him--even though this would be dishonorable and downright silly. And, the secretary, previously a die-hard supporter of the Germans, suddenly changes her mind when she gets a coded letter from her brother announcing that German and the Kaiser suck--like that would really have happened. At this point, all semblance of a plot totally falls apart to insipid melodrama and the film comes to a confusing and impossible to believe ending. However, based on the first portion of the film and the entire plot concept, this is still an important film historically and is well worth seeing.

'The Secret Game' is an espionage drama, and it's rather a good one despite a few ludicrous touches. Although the Japanese-born actor Sessue Hayakawa sometimes played other nationalities, here he's very much a Son of the Emperor. During the Great War (in which this film takes place), Japan were on the same side as the United States, opposing Germany. Hayakawa's character undertakes a mission to help the American forces, with the very honour of Japan at stake.

Refreshingly, Hayakawa (who didn't write his own scripts) plays a realistic Japanese here, rather than a caricature. Oddly, though, his character is lumbered with the ridiculous name Nara-Nara, which isn't Japanese. Couldn't Hayakawa have supplied a dinkum Japanese name for the scriptwriter to use? Nara-Nara's assistant, also Japanese, speaks his dialogue (via the title cards) in Charlie Chan syntax, with references to the Japanese having slanted eyes. There's a brief scene between Hayakawa and a servile Negro porter. Elsewhere, we briefly see a black woman looking distinctly uncomfortable in a maid's uniform while she attends several white ladies. (But at least the children's gang who play at soldiers outside Jack Holt's window are racially integrated.)

The intertitles make it very clear where the spies are. The leader is Smith, really named Schmidt. Charles Ogle is excellent in this role: Ogle was physically better suited to playing villains rather than sympathetic characters. Smith's henchman is played by Raymond Hatton, whose character is identified as 'Mrs Harris' because he likes to disguise himself as Smith's female housekeeper. In a dodgy wig, with no cheekbones and no breasts in his female disguise, Raymond Hatton looks about as feminine as Rondo Hatton. Couldn't the Germans find a genuine female spy? Hatton spends much of his screen time in this film wearing male garb, yet his character (presumably a German) seems to have no name other than 'Mrs Harris'.

When talking pictures feature a male character in female disguise, the cross-dresser almost invariably has a line of dialogue (while uncrossing his dressing) about how it 'sure feels good' to get back into male clothes ... so we won't get the wrong idea about him. In this silent film, we get a visual equivalent: as 'Mrs Harris', Raymond Hatton pulls off his wig and women's shoes, and hitches up his skirts to reveal trousers underneath. He puts on his much larger male shoes, and THEN he conspicuously sighs in contentment. But Hatton isn't going anywhere: if those female shoes are so uncomfortable, then surely it makes more sense for Hatton to relax with NO shoes on, rather than donning male shoes.

Apparently the Germans have got a female spy after all: Florence Vidor, looking prettier as usual, as a German spy with the cover name Kitty Litter, I mean Kitty Little. A title card tells us that she's a German 'with a deeply concealed hyphen in her name'. She easily infiltrates the staff of U.S. Army officer Northfield (Jack Holt), who oddly leases office space in a civilian building.

This film's strong points occur in the procedural sequences of the Germans spying on Northfield, and Hayakawa counterspying on the Germans. At its best moments, 'The Secret Game' reminded me of Fritz Lang's vastly superior film 'Spies'. Sadly, those best moments are far between. Holt's character is supposedly a regular golfer ... but when Jack Holt hoists an iron in one shot, his swing is so inept I could tell he was a stranger to the links.

SPOILERS COMING. Although Florence Vidor's costume in one sequence is lumbered with an enormous belt buckle, I was surprised by how pretty she looked in this movie. So it was no surprise for me when she changed sides and joined the American cause. She and Holt fall in love. Hatton (in male clothes) kills Hayakawa, but not before the latter accomplishes his mission and saves the American convoy. A bit earlier, at the film's climax, Hayakawa manhandles Vidor with a startling amount of viciousness. Even though he's meant to be a goodie and she's meant to be a baddie (she hasn't reformed yet), this sequence astonished me. Perhaps audiences in 1917 accepted it because Nara-Nara (Hayakawa's role) was an Oriental and therefore supposedly less civilised than a white man; I wonder if these film-makers would have depicted a white protagonist manhandling a woman so thoroughly.

Since this isn't a supernatural story, I was intrigued by the presence of two 'ghost' shots. As Holt addresses his ball on the golf course, a double-exposure of Vidor materialises beside him ... informing the audience that he's falling in love with her. After Nara-Nara is killed, a transparent version of Hayakawa appears as his spirit. Throughout the film, Hayakawa has worn western clothes (with Japanese and American flag pins in his lapel), but now his spirit wears Japanese ceremonial garb and clutches a samurai sword. Hayakawa's final sequence (as a spirit) is touching, and very much sympathetic to Japanese culture. I was annoyed that this poignant sequence was spoilt by an anticlimactic romantic fade-out for Holt and Vidor.

Cecil B DeMille (capital D, one-word surname) and William C de Mille (lower-case D, two-word surname) were brothers who didn't get along, so they seldom collaborated. 'The Secret Game' is a rare instance of both brothers appearing in the credits of the same film (although in different title cards), allowing audiences to see that they punctuated their names differently. Despite its many oddities and flaws, there are several excellent scenes in 'The Secret Game', and I'll rate this one 7 out of 10.

For the first fifty minutes of this seventy minute movie, we get a standard but pretty entertaining WWI spy thriller. Obviously propaganda, but as far as WWI propaganda goes, it has some fun elements and well-composed shots, even if the cinematography on the whole is pretty static. Sessue Hayakawa is understated and intelligent as the Japanese agent out to help the Americans root out German spies and Florence Vidor is effective as the conflicted German spy whose conscience begins to affect her work when she starts caring about her American associates.

So far, so good-- then Hayakawa finds out Vidor is a spy and things get downright cheap and lurid. Having been in love with her, Hayakawa's character suddenly gets rapey and tries to force Vidor to become his lover in exchange for his silence to the proper authorities. When she reminds him of his "honor" and duty to the Emperor, he gets guilty, then essentially allows himself to be killed while Vidor walks off scot-free because the plot needs its happy ending from somewhere.

This ending is just insulting, especially since there was nothing sinister about Hayakawa's character before those last twenty minutes. Absolutely awful. The movie would have been much better with a less melodramatic finish and a more credible redemption for Vidor's spy.

"The Secret Game" is often a modestly entertaining feature, but it suffers serious flaws, especially its sudden melodramatic turn for the worse during the climax. Additionally, as fellow commenter F Gwynplaine MacIntyre said, it seems odd that the military would lease space in a civilian building. It allows a shop owner from next door to waltz into a military office attended only by a janitor and for a wiretap through the wall. Why Raymond Hatton dresses as a woman doesn't make sense, and he's not very convincing, either. Before the ending, however, it's interesting to watch the spy games, as Sessue Hayakawa's character searches for clues and eavesdrops on German spies during WWI, and Florence Vidor's character struggles with her feelings of conspiring for her motherland. Before the denouement, the film managed to be pro-American without being offensively anti-German and included a decent portrayal of the Japanese.

The finale has Vidor's character switch national identities and for no apparent reason other than this stated switch and her beauty is allowed to go free; in fact, the military officer lies to cover up the fact that she conspired against American and Japanese war plans. The military officer, played by Jack Holt, also becomes the hero after seeming to have been dull background for most of the picture. I also don't understand why he didn't immediately investigate why Hayakawa's character was bugging his office after he discovered that fact. Hayakawa's character is turned from detective hero to attempted rapist as he offers to cover up for Vidor's character in exchange for her going to Japan with him; yet, after the immorality of this action is pointed out to him, he decides to essentially commit suicide, although, perhaps, the filmmakers meant it to be more of a self-sacrifice. These awful melodramas, it seems, must end with either a poor person or non-Caucasian dying in some self-sacrifice. In the end, how are we supposed to buy Vidor and Holt's characters saluting patriotically—they're both accessories to treason against the US. Ridiculous.

(Note: The print has some deterioration.)