Reviews of silent film releases on home video. Copyright © 1999-2024 by Carl Bennett and the Silent Era Company. All Rights Reserved.

The Dragon Painter (1919)

Sessue Hayakawa and Tsuru Aoki star in this romantic tale of a mad, reclusive Japanese artist who believes that his love has been captured by a dragon. Discovered by a surveyor, he is brought to the attention of a famed painter who is looking for an apprentice, but whose daughter the young artist sees as his fantasy fiancée. She becomes the nexus of a clash of hopes, desires and wills between the old and young artists.

The film was recovered in a French-language export print, and has been restored by the American Film Institute in conjunction with the George Eastman Museum film archive and the Museum of Modern Art. The second surviving 35mm nitrate print has since been identified by the Eye Film Instituut Nederland. A new restoration was undertaken and completed in 2023. Shots missing from one print have been sourced from the other to expand the narrative from what was available in the 1988 restoration.

This Blu-ray Disc edition has been mastered from a 4K high-resolution scan produced in 2023 by the San Francisco Silent Film Festival, Eye Film Instituut Nederland and George Eastman Museum of the 1988 American Film Institute photochemical 35mm diacetate restoration print (originally with French intertitles), with additional footage from a color-tinted and color-toned 35mm nitrate print with Dutch intertitles held by Eye Film Instituut Nederland. It has been determined that the Dutch print originates from the American domestic negative, and the French print from the European export negative. The two negatives were originally assembled from alternate takes rather than from the same performance captured from a side-by-side camera position. The Dutch print was chosen as the main source material for this new restoration. Some additonal digital stabilization and clean-up has been performed on the conflated scan to reduce but not totally eliminate flaws, and new English intertitles have been created.

The film is accompanied by a lovely music score composed and performed on piano by Makia Matsumura, with a second music score composed by Mas Koga and performed with him by a small ensemble. The optional music tracks are not switchable while the film is playing.

Supplemental material includes the fascinating documentary “Reconstructing The Dragon Painter,” with side-by-side comparisons of the two source prints and with running commentary by Robert Byrne and Kathy Rose O’Regan (66 minutes); and a 16-page insert booklet. We are pleased that this new edition includes two other Hawakawa films, with music scores by Brett Miller, that were not a part of Milestone’s earlier DVD edition of the film. You have a good reason right there to add this Blu-ray Disc edition to the DVD edition you may already own, but, should you need further reason, the restoration documentary is worth the price of admission alone.

For our comparative reviews of the other films on this disc, see our His Birthright on home video and The Man Beneath on home video pages.

This is our enthusiastically recommended home video edition of the film.

USA: Click the logomark to purchase this Regions ABC Blu-ray Disc edition from Amazon.com. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
Canada: Click the logomark to purchase this Regions ABC Blu-ray Disc edition from Amazon.ca. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
This Regions ABC Blu-ray Disc edition is also available from MILESTONE FILMS through . . .

This DVD edition of a Hayakawa double-bill features The Dragon Painter transferred from the excellent 1988 35mm restoration by the American Film Institute in conjunction with the George Eastman Museum film archive and the Museum of Modern Art. The photochemical restoration leaves in all of the flaws of the source material: dust, speckling, frame instability, emulsion scrapes and scuffing, and other such flaws.

The film is accompanied by a music score composed and performed by Marco Lienhard and Mark Izu.

Supplemental material includes a Hayakawa appearance in a novelty short film; the original script for The Wrath of the Gods; a stills gallery; an essay by Brian Taves; and the text of the source novel, The Dragon Painter by Mary McNeil Fenollosa.

This remains our recommended DVD home video edition of the film.

USA: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 NTSC DVD edition from Amazon.com. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
Canada: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 NTSC DVD edition from Amazon.ca. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
This Region 0 NTSC DVD edition is also available from MILESTONE FILMS through . . .