An unusual Hollywood Orientalist production in which both the female and male lead were cast in yellowface but oftentimes dressed in Western attire, a fact that makes their yellowface makeup even more artificial or otherwise indistinguishable. Edward G. Robinson's almost "minimalist" yellowface makeup surely belongs to the latter group. It looks as if he is just playing in a sequel to Little Caesar (1931), despite the extensive use of close-ups that emphasize the flatness of his face and the added-on epicanthal ("Mongolian") fold. The plot on the Tong wars was definitely riding on the gangster cycle from the year before. In order not to make their yellowface performance look too artificial, Caucasian actors in yellowface were used even in supporting roles and extras, which arguably achieves the opposite. The wife's lover Harry En Hai played by Leslie Fenton (who played in The Public Enemy a year ago) in yellowface creates an almost uncanny effect, not (only) because it blurs the boundary between two races, but between human face and mask, in other words, between the organic and inorganic, life and death. It is most telling in the last scene of the film, in which his head is pinned to a wall by the hatchet, and his lifeless body accentuates the mask-like quality of his face covered by the caked yellowface makeup. There is of course a gender difference here, for Loretta Young's makeup is probably not less heavy and caked. But in an era of Art Deco aesthetics, Young's Asian makeup paradoxically emphasizes her whiteness, as well as the versatility of whiteness, facilitated by the most advanced makeup products and techniques. The fact that she can be seen, as much as in her first appearance in film, dressed in modern Western attire WHILE playing an Oriental supposedly convincingly (by the Art Deco standard) testifies to this racial ideology that entertains both "the permeability and intransigence of the racial divide."
Review of The Hatchet Man
