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Rating:  - Great set but poor restoration
No argument about the content of this set....the Warner Oland Charlie Chan films are great and long overdue from Fox on DVD. The digital restoration has largely solved the issues of film artifacts, however it has introduced way too much graininess into the images. It's downright distracting and in many respects worse than the problem they were trying to solve. If one wants to see how it should be done, look at the recently issued Sherlock Holmes Collection. The results on that set are superb.
Rating: - RESTORATION ?
Not a bad restoration but not the best either. What about the white mark in the top left hand corner of " CHARLIE CHAN IN PARIS". It keeps you transfixed to this blob for over an hour. Highly amusing. Before and after restoration comparison very funny also. Is someone pulling our leg. All the very best from Craig in Oz.
Rating:  - CHASING (AND CHERISHING) CHARLIE CHAN CLASSICS
Honorable ancestors can rejoice-- two detective series from the inscrutable east have been preserved on DVD for our delight and delectation. Honorable Charlie Chan, the Chinese detective, and wily Mr. Moto, the Japanese detective, two of the stalwarts of the Fox film series, stand up surprisingly well after nearly 70 years.
Addressing the issue of inherent racism and stereotyping first, yes, these films present Asians as outsiders, very different and strange, but gifted with near superhuman powers of observation. However, it must be admitted that these characters are a far cry from the black Stepin Fetchits and gay Franklin Pangborns of the same period. Asians would suffer greatly at the hands of Hollywood before, during and after the Second World War, but these products of the '30s are considerably more benign, than, say, the Fu Manchu series, presenting an Asian as an arch demon.
Twentieth Century Fox has released four of the earliest films from each of the series, and while they are, frankly, B-movies, they are surprisingly well-made and entertaining. We follow Chan through London in the first, Paris in the second, Egypt in the third, and finally Shanghai, where the sleuth solves a variety of killings with patient observations and little interaction. On the other hand, Mr. Moto, who must think fast, take a chance, be simply mysterious, and then allow a thank you, seems something more of a hands-on secret agent than just a detective. Moto actually kills people, usually in self defense, and uses a bundle of disguises and subterfuges to solve his cases, which usually point more to international conspiracies than merely murder.
It's interesting than Chan was played by Warner Oland, a Swedish actor, and Moto by Peter Lorre, a German actor. As vehicles, the Chans seem a little weaker; the Motos not only seem more tightly conceived and cast, but also have the good fortune to be all directed by the same man, Norman Foster, who was one of Orson Welles' directors. In both series, the usual suspects of Hollywood's stock character performers pop up with alarming regularity, and Fox's B-unit, churned out by Sol Wurtzel at the rate of twice a month for over a decade, seems somehow a cut above the similar units at Warners and Metro. While none of these films can be called examples of cinematic greatness, they each run roughly a very fast 70 minutes, are engaging and unpretentious. To perhaps snag a bit of the dialogue from either series, we should bow slightly at the waist in the direction of Twentieth Century Fox and say, "Thank you so much."
Rating: - The Charm of Charlie Chan
Loosely basing the character the legendary police officer Chang Apana (1887-1933), author Earl Derr Biggers (1884-1933) wrote the first Charlie Chan novel in 1925. His novels, six in all, were immensely popular--and Hollywood soon bought the rights. At least two silent films, which do not survive made; a third film, BEYOND THAT CURTAIN, reduced the character of Chan to a minor role. In 1931, however, Fox studios hit the right mixture of mystery and comedy with CHARLIE CHAN CARRIES ON, and the result was an immensely popular series of forty-five films made over the course of two decades. These films were staples of afternoon and late night television well into the 1970s, but as time passed pressure groups that considered them politically incorrect forced them from public view.
Even so, the Chan films commanded a large cult following, and the films gradually became widely available in various bootleg editions--so popular, in fact, that 20th Century Fox eventually saw the commercial possibilities. THE CHARLIE CHAN COLLECTION VOLUME 1 is the result, and although it can be faulted in several ways, it is pretty much what Chan fans have dreamed of for the past decade.
The single greatest fault of the collection is its failure to include THE BLACK CAMEL, the earliest surviving Chan film to star Warner Oland, and one of the few Chan films directly based on an Earl Derr Biggers novel. Although the films have been digitally remastered, and they are easily the best prints to come along in many, many years, the remaster is not "full;" it merely smooths away the worst of the scratches and artifacts. And although the bonuses included are excellent, they are very scant.
Even so, this is Charlie Chan, and he hasn't looked this good in close to five decades. All four films star Warner Oland--and some viewers may be surprised to find that Chan films were a breeding ground for talent, for a number of future stars cut their teeth in Chan films. IN LONDON (1934) finds Chan investigating a murder among the horsey set--and co-stars a very young Ray Milland. IN PARIS (1935; long thought to be a lost film in the series) concerns a bank scandal--and introduces Keye Luke as Chan's "Number One Son." IN EGYPT (1935) finds Chan investing a series of murders amidst archeological digs--and features both a very young Rita Hayworth and the notorious Stepin Fetchit. IN SHANGHAI (1935) finds Chan doing battle with smugglers--and returns Keye Luke to the mix. The scripts are witty, the plots are flyweight but entertaining, and the casts always give a good performance.
Critics of the series complain that white actors played Chinese in "yellowface" make-up; that Chan speaks in pidgen English; that he is a stereotypical "stupid Chinaman" and that he is the butt of racial jokes. These complaints, however, really have little basis in the films themselves. Although he was European, Warner Oland had an Asian heritage and used very little make up for the role--and all supporting Asian characters were played by Asian actors, with Keye Luke a case in point. Chan does not speak pidgen English; in both novels and films he speaks English as a second language and, quite naturally occasionally struggles with it. Although he occasionally adopts the poise of a "stupid Chinaman," he does so to mislead the suspects around him, and when a character repeatedly makes Chan the butt of racial jokes you can be pretty sure he will turn out to be the killer.
Hollywood films of the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s had a very clear tendency to adopt a "Fu Manchu" mentality: although there was an occasionally sympathetic portrayal, most Chinese characters were either servile or evil. Chan, however, interacts with the "white world" as an equal--and outsmarts them at the end. As such, the films were remarkably advanced for their time and were in fact immensely popular with Asian-American audiences of the day.
All of this said, it is quite true that Charlie Chan films are very innocent in their outlook--but it is this innocence that gives them their charm. Love them or hate them, they are period peices that reflect the niave failings of their day, but which do so without malice and often with considerably appeal. In addition to a trailer for CHARLIE CHAN IN LONDON and three short but interesting "featurettes," the set includes ERAN TRECE, the Hollywood-produced Spanish language version of the lost 1931 Charlie Chan Carries On, available here in a reasonable print for the first time. Recommended for Chan fans everywhere.
GFT, Amazon Reviewer
Rating: - Long live Chan! Let me tell you about PC!
***** I'm torn between Toler and Oland, but these are great Chan! I look forward to the next volumes!
I am a WWII baby. My first taste of "Orientals" was the anti Japanese propaganda and extreme hatred of "The Yellow Peril." By the time I was a youngster aware of what I was watching at the movies in our small town theater, Charlie Chan was dispelling ALL of the dislike of Asians. I grew up loving and collecting Chan on tape and stayed up all night watching Chan movies on cable. I bought the Toler Chan set on LASER DISC and again on DVD. I will buy every volume available.
I note that I have now travelled extensively in Asia and hope to return soon to see the many friends I made. Probably because of the Chan movies. If you are Asian and think Chan was bad, remember this small town boy who admires and respects Asians!
DD
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