The Toll of the Sea / Bold Journey: “Native Land” - Harvard Film Archive

Sunday | October 8, 2006 7:00 pm

The Toll of the Sea

Directed by Chester M. Franklin

Bold Journey: “Native Land”

1957, digital video, color, 30 min

Live Musical Accompaniment
Screening on Film

The Toll of the Sea

Directed by Chester M. Franklin.
With Anna May Wong, Kenneth Harlan, Beatrice Bentley.
US, 1922, 35mm, black & white, silent, 45 min.
Print source: UCLA

The first color feature film was also seventeen-year-old Wong’s first leading role. In this popular melodrama based on Puccini’s Madame Butterfly, Variety singled out “the extraordinarily fine playing of Anna May Wong, who is an exquisite crier without glycerin.”

Restored 35mm print from UCLA Film and TV Archive.

Bold Journey: “Native Land”

1957, digital video, color, 30 min.
Copy source: Private collector

Wong narrates this television documentary about her 1936 trip to China. Rare archival footage.

September 26 – November 15, 2006

Centennial Starlets: Anna May Wong and Janet Gaynor

March 4–April 21

Jean-Pierre Bekolo, 2024 McMillan-Stewart Fellow

March 29–May 5

Chronicles of Changing Times. The Cinema of Edward Yang