Drifting (1923)

A young American woman (Priscilla Dean) is involved in the opium smuggling racket in Shanghai. She travels to a small village where the opium is created but she falls in love with a man (Matt Moore) who is intent on destroying the opium industry there. Based on the play by John Colton and directed by Tod Browning (DRACULA). I found the film to be just okay without much style or artistry. In the end, it comes across as just another morality play, "Opium is bad". Dean is an appealing actress but I found her character's shifts rather abrupt which lessened their believability. The film has a fiery finale but it was confusing especially in relation to Anna May Wong's (as an opium dealer's daughter) fate. Was she raped? Where did she get her wound? This is one silent movie that could have used an orchestral underscore instead of the anemic piano score that accompanied it. With Wallace Beery and J. Farrell MacDonald.