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Cimino in Year of the Dragon takes note of the opening sequence: William Wellman's camera pans along with a Chinatown funeral and ascends to the side of a building where a vast dragon banner is unfurled, then continues with high-angled views of locals scurrying across the street set to a cacophony of gongs. The title refers to the sacramental assassin (Edward G. Robinson) who's summoned to curtail Tong wars, part of "the justice of the great god Buddha." His latest target is the childhood friend (J. Carrol Naish) whose daughter he takes under his wing, the deed is staged as shadow play and the hatchet's heavy thud cuts to the little girl turning in bed, her dolly's head falls off. "Sometimes it is better that the eye should not see what the hand is doing." Old ways in the New World, modernism means a respectable business with a sideline for bumping off racketeers. The daughter grows up to be a dutiful bride (Loretta Young), the smooth bodyguard from New York (Leslie Fenton) makes his move, "the Chinese manner" is to be observed. A continuation of the netherworld of gangs from The Public Enemy, with the ornate clutter of Anton Grot's interiors briefly giving way to a spacious tracking shot in an open field. "When fortunes go, the soil remains. It's our heritage." The moon in the wedding ring, the trussed-up corpse on the waterfront, the vacant coffin for a lost honor. The blade comes out of retirement for the return to the motherland, and put to good use at the opium den on the Street of the Red Lanterns. The stinger is from Diderot, "les grands artistes ont un petit coup de hache dans la tête." With Dudley Digges, Edmund Breese, Tully Marshall, Charles Middleton, Toshia Mori, and Ralph Ince. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |