The Toll of the Sea

Plot

When young Chinese woman Lotus Flower sees an unconscious man floating in the water at the seashore, she quickly gets help for him. The man is Allen Carver, an American. Soon the two have fallen in love, and they get married "Chinese fashion". Carver promises to take her with him when he returns home. Lotus Flower's friends warn her that he will leave without her, and one states she has been forgotten by four American husbands, but she does not believe them. However, Carver's friends discourage him from fulfilling his promise, and he returns to the United States alone.

Lotus Flower has a young son, whom she names Allen after his father. When the older Allen finally returns to China, Lotus Flower is at first overjoyed. She dresses in her elaborate Chinese bridal gown to greet him. However, he is accompanied by his American wife, Elsie. Allen has told Elsie about Lotus Flower, and it is Elsie who persuaded her husband to tell Lotus Flower the real situation. When the boy is brought to see his father, Lotus Flower pretends he is the child of her American neighbors. Later, though, she confides the truth to Elsie and asks her to take the boy to America. She tells the child that Elsie is his real mother. After Elsie takes the boy away with her, Lotus Flower says, "Oh, Sea, now that life has been emptied I come to pay my great debt to you." The sun is then shown setting over the water, and it is implied that Lotus Flower drowns herself.

Cast

Production

Because the Technicolor camera divided the lens image into two beams to expose two film frames simultaneously through color filters, and at twice the normal frames per second, much higher lighting levels were needed. All scenes of The Toll of the Sea were shot under "natural light" and outdoors, with the one "interior" scene shot in sunlight under a muslin sheet.

Accolades

The film is recognized by American Film Institute in these lists:

Preservation status

Believed to have been lost in the 1967 MGM Vault fire, it was restored by the UCLA Film and Television Archive, under the supervision of Robert Gitt and Richard Dayton, from the 35mm nitrate film original camera negative in 1985. As the final two reels were missing, Gitt and Dayton used "an original two-color Technicolor camera" to shoot a sunset on a California beach, "much as the film's original closing must have looked." Because modern film technology was used to create a color print instead of the original Technicolor Process 2, which involved cementing together two film strips base to base, the resulting image quality is better than the original prints appeared.

Availability

The restored version is available as one of the titles included in the 4-DVD box-set Treasures from American Film Archives, 50 Preserved Films.