DRIFTING (1923)
Special Features: Silent with live musical accompaniment by Donald Sosin and Joanna Seaton
In his penultimate collaboration with actress Priscilla Dean, adapted from the Broadway play of the same name, writer/director Tod Browning weaves an intricate crime drama that also features a pivotal supporting performance from 18-year-old Anna May Wong in one of her first film roles. Dean delivers a steely, multifaceted turn as Cassie Cook, a jaded young woman involved in the Shanghai opium trade. Her sights are set on escape, and she has made up her mind to return to America with her drug-addicted friend Molly Norton (Edna Tichenor) in tow. Facing a shortage of cash, she retreats to Hang Chow, a small village near the poppy fields, to intercept a smuggling job organized by her rival-turned-colleague Jules Repin (Wallace Beery). But Cassie is soon sidetracked by sussing out whether Captain Arthur Jarvis (Matt Moore), working to revive a decommissioned mine, is, in fact, a government plant with a mandate to disrupt the town’s black market activities. (Note courtesy of Film at Lincoln Center) DIR/SCR Tod Browning; SCR A.P. Younger, from the play by John Colton and Daisy H. Andrews; PROD Carl Laemmle. U.S., 1923, b&w, 70 min. Silent with English intertitles. NOT RATED
About Donald Sosin & Joanna Seaton
Joanna Seaton and Donald Sosin bring their unique blend of keyboards, vocals and percussion to major film festivals and venues around the world. They perform often at Italy’s annual silent film retrospectives in Bologna and Pordenone. They have appeared numerous times at Yale, Harvard, Brown, Cornell and Emory Universities and have created scores for over 65 silent film DVDs on the Criterion, Kino, Milestone and Flicker Alley labels, among others. Their workshops in silent film music and songwriting are popular with students of all ages.
Called a “silvery soprano” by the New York Times, Joanna, a native of Manhattan, has a Theatre Arts degree from Cornell University. She has appeared in over 80 Off-Broadway, regional and stock theatre productions and has sung with jazz great Dick Hyman at the 92nd St. Y. Donald grew up in Rye, NY and Munich and played on Broadway for many years, after composition studies at Michigan and Columbia. His music has been heard on PBS, TCM, as background for network soaps and in many contemporary films. The couple lives in northwest Connecticut with their children.
Run Time: 70 Minutes
Opening Date: Saturday, November 02, 2024
Genre: Silent drama