Anna May Wong gives one of the most compelling screen performances of her career as a woman tormented by unrequited love.

Song (named in a nod to Anna May Wong’s birth-name, Wong Liu Tsong) is washed-up on the shore of Constantinople where she is rescued by artist-in-exile John. With nowhere else to turn, Song persuades her saviour to take her in, quickly making herself indispensable by joining John’s knife-throwing act. Despite Song’s tender care and loyalty, John remains devoted to an old flame: a self-centred ballerina who broke his heart years before.

Anna May Wong quit Hollywood, and its relentlessly stereotyped casting in secondary roles, to work on this film in the thriving German cinema industry. While once again cast as the exotic ‘other’, she is the undisputed star of this picture, bringing extraordinary depth and dignity to a role written expressly for her.

Dir. Richard Eichberg | Germany, UK 1928 | N/C 12A | b&w | English intertitles | 1h 42

With: Anna May Wong, Heinrich George, Mary Kid

Original title: Die Liebe eines armen Menschenkindes

Performing live: Stephen Horne (piano, violin, flute), Frank Bockius (percussion) 

Online programme notes: Katie Gee Salisbury

Screening material courtesy of Filmmuseum Düsseldorf.

Screening supported by the Confucius Institute for Scotland at the University of Edinburgh