Mysterious Mr. Moto (1938)

Mr. Moto (Peter Lorre) has himself imprisoned on Devil's Island so he can help his cellmate (Leon Ames) escape and thereby get the goods on a gang of international killers.Trying to determine where the racism begins, ends and is even refuted in the Mr. Moto pictures is a fun game. Certainly, Moto himself can be thought of as a racist invention because of his portrayal by white man. But then, he is portrayed as clever and likable, so it is not as though the creators meant to insult the Japanese.Further, the film actually shows men acting racist and presents them in a poor light. And a subtle jab is given to racism when Moto is able to easily get through a gate by merely being a house servant. Who is foolish here? On top of all this, we have a fairly decent detective story, a jail break, and a mighty impressive bar fight.

Mr. Moto is undercover again. This time he helps Leon Ames escape from Devil's Island and then works for him as a servant so he can spy on the League of Assassins that Ames is part of. From what I've read here, this part of the movie has ruffled a few feathers as Lorre plays the Japanese servant in a very stereotypical manner. But it should be pointed out he's trying to appear slow-witted and harmless to throw off suspicion, so it's not like a Stepin Fetchit situation. There's actually a plot reasoning for it; he's not doing it to get racist laughs. Moto also puts on a disguise as a German artist at the art show late in the movie. This is amusing when you think about it: a German playing Japanese playing a German. Overall, it's not the best Moto picture. Lorre's performance helps things greatly but the story is pretty weak. Henry Wilcoxon plays an infuriating character who keeps refusing to believe there's any danger. There's a mystery about who is the leader of the League of Assassins that will come as no surprise to anyone. I'll give you a hint: it's an American actor using a dreadful British accent. It's a nice time-killer but nothing more.

Of all the yellowface performances I've ever seen from classic Hollywood, Peter Lorre's Mr. Moto strikes me as the least offensive. The only times the character comes off as too stereotypical are when Mr. Moto is trying to trick dumb white people into thinking he's an ignorant heathen. Most of the time he's exceedingly intelligent, a Japanese Sherlock Holmes. He even has a couple of action sequences (apparently the audiences at the time ate up the Judo stuff). Lorre's just great in the role. The rest of the cast here is fine, too (the most recognizable actors are Henry Wilcoxon and Erik Rhodes). The Asian detective character was extremely popular at the time, the most famous of them being Charlie Chan (there's also Boris Karloff's Mr. Wong). I'm planning to take in a Charlie Chan and Mr. Wong film (n.b. I did end up watching Mr. Wong, Detective afterward, and it was pretty good, too) just for comparison. I also plan on watching all the other Mr. Moto films available to me. I love Lorre and very much enjoyed this film.

One of the weakest gimmicks in the Sol Wurtzel-Peter Lorre Moto series was Moto's occasional attempts to lurk about in disguise a la Sherlock Holmes. It's surprising therefore that one of the most successful (and dramatically strongest) films in the series featured Moto doing an extended undercover operation as "Ito," the pidgen-English-speaking Japanese houseboy of a British gangster. The scenes in which Ito/Moto is treated with condescending contempt by his employer and roughed up by Cockney barflies are clearly intended to stimulate the audiences' outrage against their stupidly bigoted treatment of "his kind"--racism here being portrayed as a specifically British tendency, in stark contrast to the friendly respect with which Mr. Moto is treated by American characters. Considering that the Moto series itself has been labeled racist--the assumption being that casting the "ugly" Jew Lorre as a Japanese was an insult to Asians, never mind the way the character was actually treated in the films--it may be time to take a more objective second look.