Educational Media Reviews Online

Anna May Wong: In Her Own Words documents the career of the early-twentieth-century Chinese American actress Anna May Wong. The amount of letters and interviews Wong left behind after her death in 1961 is substantial, and director Yunah Hong uses that content in a creative way in this film. The actress Doan Ly, who greatly resembles Wong, speaks Wong’s words in the first person directly to the camera, as if Wong had always intended her thoughts for the viewers of this documentary.

This film combines a chronological survey of Anna Wong’s career as an actress with a critical look at the challenges she faced as a Chinese American professional in a time of transparent racism. Though she was limited to typecast and supporting roles, Wong stretched public perception of Chinese Americans. Her filming experiences in Germany and the U.K. afforded her some slightly more respectable and exotic roles than what she was offered in her home country of the Unites States, where she was expected to play the evil “dragon lady” or a prostitute. The film spends a good amount of time on Wong’s relationship with her heritage, which is magnified in her 1936 trip to Shanghai, where her arrival was not immediately well-received by Chinese critics who felt her roles played in America denigrated Chinese women. There is some audio of “the real” Wong sharing her thoughts about her trip to China, particularly being there with her family, and how strange it was communicating with “her people” through an interpreter since she didn’t speak Chinese.

The film includes some fascinating clips of Wong acting in films and interviews with current filmmakers and historians. Paramount Pictures’ A.C. Lyles and British director Jack Cardiff are notable interviewees. One of the more interesting and lengthy interviews is with Conrad Doerr, a former tenant of Wong’s who befriended her after the peak of her career. Most of the film is made up of interviews or the thoughts of “Wong” herself, with very little voiceover narration.

This film takes a very down-to-earth approach to evaluating Wong’s career. While not criticizing Wong directly for her acceptance of roles that marginalized her race and gender, the film is transparent and informative about such issues. Perhaps the decision to use “Wong” herself as the narrator is a way of keeping the discussion impartial. At the very least we have a nice balance of perspectives: Wong’s own take on her motives and experiences, plus the thoughts of those who are inclined to speak about her with great criticism or exhaustive reverence. Recommended for collections that support coursework in gender studies and film studies.