Who’s cardboard and who’s real? $xx if you can guess!
There’s a sociological puzzle to Phantom of Chinatown (1940) for which I have no solution. This murder mystery revolves around the death of expedition leader Dr. Benton. He’s returned from leading an archaeological expedition into the Mongolian desert, where he retrieves a scroll that might give the location of “eternal fire.” He dies during a presentation on the subject back home in San Francisco.
Into the mix are then thrust the San Francisco PD, Win Lee from China, and James Lee Wong, a Chinese-American. Wong is a friend of Benton’s, and so takes on a private investigation of his death, a subject of some resentment by the SFPD representatives. His investigation of expedition members, as well as Win Lee, eventually leads to the setting of a trap, revealing that a supposedly lost member of the expedition is still alive, and directing the plot to steal the scroll.
The real mystery here, though, is the presentation of the various characters. As my Arts Editor remarked, it’s a casually racist movie in the attitudes of the Western European-derived Americans towards the Chinese. Yet which characters are the best drawn?
Win Lee and, by far, James Wong. They feel like real people, thoughtful and with lives beyond this story. Everyone else? Pulled out of the locker in the movie studio’s backlot, to be returned upon completion of the movie.
This story is no great shakes, but if you’re looking for a way to pass an hour or so, it might amuse you.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUHzkZpUCTA
