Answer a question for me, please?
I've heared somewhere that Crimson Kimono is the first major inneracial romantic motion picture. Is that true?
Oh woof...
In the 1950s, probably because of the Korean War when American men took Korean brides, there were a handful of high-profile interracial romance movies; Sayonara and Love is A Many-Splendored Thing; Going back to the 30s, Frank Capra's film The Bitter Tea of General Yen has an interracial romance. Hell, Fuller made an earlier film with an interracial romantic tension in House of Bamboo--so technically he predated himself!
So Fuller wasn't the first, but his film The Crimson Kimono is an absolute masterpiece nonetheless and I'd doubt any of the films mentioned above will equal this one; Fuller dealt with racism in many of his movies, and never once do you feel talked down to or like Fuller was giving himself a pat on the back. His sensitivity to different cultures is evident all throughout every frame of his love letter to LA, and the romance is one of the most unforced in any romantic film. Plus, Victoria Shaw is a real sweetheart.
It happened once... It happened once, and so it will be forever.
Interracial romances tended to be exploitation material in the 50s for some producers. The people who distributed The Crimson Kimono for instance well see their poster...
http://www.davekehr.com/?p=436
But of course Fuller's film is considerably more mature and sober(even by his standards) to escape that. The film played at the bottom half of a double bill and in its day audiences often numbered it among one of the B movies which easily surpassed the A movies.
With The Crimson Kimono Fuller was really dealing with a believable multi-cultural society and the race issue as such is brought up only by James Shigeta's character, that is the target of racism, but it comes out of living as a minority in a major urban city. Fuller said it was about reverse racism, when people of minorities use racist attitudes to avoid dealing with their real problems. Ultimately it's a question of identity. The great scene is the parade at the end where James Shigeta's character tracks down the murderer(who is a murderess) and he realizes he, a cop, has a lot in common with that criminal. So ultimately those barriers blur too. And the film ends with a full romantic kiss between the two lovers which many thought was quite gutsy for Fuller to do in that time.
"Ça va by me, madame...Ça va by me!" - The Red Shoes
I remember reading about how Fuller complained about the advertising of his film, and reportedly the producers wanted to make the Glenn Corbett character out to be a real prick, so that Victoria Shaw would *have* to run into James Shigeta's arms and give answer to the question the film's poster questions. I think Charlie Bancroft has an excess of broiling masculinity (typical of American men of the 50s), but he's in no way a bad person; he's just a man who's used to getting what he wants. The romance between Christine and Joe is completely a thing of beauty, unforced and natural. She doesn't even seem to mind his race, she only seems more concerned that she's coming between a long and deep friendship.
The film's complete lack of an ego is what makes it so ageless, and of course Sam Fuller's incredible use of locations and dialogue (Anna Lee's crackerjack Mac is obviously a stand-in for Fuller) is on proud display here. It's also very special because it's Fuller's most romantic film, unabashedly so at that. "Love's a battleground, and somebody's got to get a bloody nose!"
It happened once... It happened once, and so it will be forever.
By 1959, prejudice against interracial romance had not totally gone away in the US. The Caucasian girl was played by Australian actress Victoria Shaw.
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