IMDb RATING
5.9/10
1.3K
YOUR RATING
The lives of a small Chinese village are turned upside down when the Japanese invade it, and a heroic young woman leads her fellow villagers in an uprising against these invaders.The lives of a small Chinese village are turned upside down when the Japanese invade it, and a heroic young woman leads her fellow villagers in an uprising against these invaders.The lives of a small Chinese village are turned upside down when the Japanese invade it, and a heroic young woman leads her fellow villagers in an uprising against these invaders.
- Nominated for 2 Oscars
- 2 nominations total
Philip Ahn
- Leader of City People
- (uncredited)
Albert Baldo
- Japanese Soldier
- (uncredited)
- Directors
- Writers
- All cast & crew
- Production, box office & more at IMDbPro
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaFilmed in 1943 on the MGM lot in Culver City, CA, the film features an unusual assortment of non-Asian actors with odd accents playing Chinese and Japanese: Russian-born and Stanislavski-trained Akim Tamiroff as Wu Lien; Turhan Bey, Viennese born son of a Turkish father and Czechoslovakian mother as the middle son, Lao Er Tan; New England patrician Katharine Hepburn as his wife; American Aline MacMahon--no longer one of the wisecracking Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933)--as the wife of Ling Tang; English-born Henry Travers (best remembered as Clarence the Angel from It's a Wonderful Life (1946)) as the Third Cousin"; Irish-American J. Carrol Naish as the Japanese Kitchen Overseer; and finally Jewish Robert Lewis, co-founder of the Actors Studio and Meryl Streep's teacher at the Yale Drama School, as Japanese Capt. Sato.
- ConnectionsEdited from The Good Earth (1937)
Featured review
Anna May Wong anyone?
Dragonseed is a whole lot like that other far better film of a Pearl Buck novel, The Good Earth. Since both came from the MGM studio the two films have the same look to them and in many ways this is another generation of the family depicted in The Good Earth facing new problems of the Japanese invasion.
Of course if it were made today, you'd be casting all oriental players in the roles. But in The Good Earth, both Paul Muni and Luise Rainer were well suited to ethnic roles. A lot of the members of the cast of Dragonseed were not.
Walter Huston at least to his credit never tried an accent in playing a Russian in North Star or a Norwegian in Edge of Darkness also films about resistance to Axis invaders. He's once again the voice of reason, driven to do unreasonable things against his nature by war. Still he doesn't come across as Chinese. Neither does Henry Travers as his scholarly cousin.
But most of all Katherine Hepburn just doesn't make it as an oriental. When Luise Rainer played Olan, the part was written with minimal dialog and she won that Best Actress Oscar for her facial expressions which said more than pages of words. Hepburn unfortunately sounds like the peasant from Bryn Mawr.
Seeing real oriental players in smaller parts like Philip Ahn and Benson Fong only draw attention to how ridiculous some of the occidentals look.
It's not a bad story, maybe it would have been better if they cast Anna May Wong though.
Of course if it were made today, you'd be casting all oriental players in the roles. But in The Good Earth, both Paul Muni and Luise Rainer were well suited to ethnic roles. A lot of the members of the cast of Dragonseed were not.
Walter Huston at least to his credit never tried an accent in playing a Russian in North Star or a Norwegian in Edge of Darkness also films about resistance to Axis invaders. He's once again the voice of reason, driven to do unreasonable things against his nature by war. Still he doesn't come across as Chinese. Neither does Henry Travers as his scholarly cousin.
But most of all Katherine Hepburn just doesn't make it as an oriental. When Luise Rainer played Olan, the part was written with minimal dialog and she won that Best Actress Oscar for her facial expressions which said more than pages of words. Hepburn unfortunately sounds like the peasant from Bryn Mawr.
Seeing real oriental players in smaller parts like Philip Ahn and Benson Fong only draw attention to how ridiculous some of the occidentals look.
It's not a bad story, maybe it would have been better if they cast Anna May Wong though.
helpful•118
- bkoganbing
- Jun 18, 2007
- How long is Dragon Seed?Powered by Alexa
Details
Box office
- Budget
- $3,000,000 (estimated)
- Runtime2 hours 28 minutes
- Aspect ratio
- 1.37 : 1
Contribute to this page
Suggest an edit or add missing content