The Dragon Painter (1919)

The Dragon Painter is a 1919 English language silent romance drama film. It is based on the novel of the same name, written by Mary McNeil Fenollosa. It stars Sessue Hayakawa as a mentally disturbed young painter who believes that his fiancée, Hayakawa's wife Tsuru Aoki, is a princess who has been captured and turned into a dragon. It was directed by William Worthington and filmed in Yosemite Valley, Yosemite National Park, California, USA.

The Dragon Painter was restored in 1988 by the American Film Institute with the George Eastman House and MoMA. In 2014, the film was added to the National Film Registry.

Synopsis

Tatsu (Hayakawa) is a young painter who lives within the mountains of Hakawa, Japan, doing a series of paintings and disposing of them upon completion, shouting to the gods to return his fiancée, a princess whom he believed was turned into a dragon. Tatsu then heads to a nearby village, demanding some paper from the locals. His unusual behavior catches the attention of a man named Uchida (Fujita), a friend of the famous painter Kano Indara (Peil, Sr.), who seeks someone to be Indara's prodigy as Indara has no son to be his heir and continue the family bloodline of paintings.

Actors