WARNING: SPOILERS

Before it was this it was a 1919 movie, and before it was that it was a 1918 movie, and originally it was a 1913 play, staged in London, though only of its writers, Harold Owen, was British. The other, Maurice Vernon, hailed from Lexington, Kentucky—about as far from China as you can get, I imagine. I’m having trouble finding anything about either playwright. There have no Wiki entries, no obits on newspapers.com, while IMDb’s template bio, which they generate for lesser-known artisans, isn't exactly helpful:

Maurice Vernon was born on July 11, 1880 in Lexington, Kentucky, USA. He was a writer, known for Mr. Wu (1927), Mr. Wu (1918) and Mr. Wu (1919).

In no version of said Mr. Wus, by the way, are the Chinese principles played by Chinese actors. Always yellowface. This one is actually progressive in having some Chinese actors on board, notably Anna May Wong as Loo Song, the friend/lady-in-waiting to Nang Ping (Renée Adorée), daughter to the titular and terrifying Mr. Wu (Lon Chaney). Anna May is great, beautiful and naturalistic, not a misstep in the performance. The misstep is in not casting her as Nang Ping. 看：It's Adorée front and center and Wong to the right. 

Good god. I’d say “They know not what they did," but they knew.

The West is coming
“Mr. Wu,” a story of star-crossed lovers, does contain some interesting plot twists. One in particular.

We get two prologues before the action picks up. In the first, Wu’s grandfather (also Chaney, in amazing makeup) sees that “The West is coming to the East” and “The Little Wu must be taught to hold his own,” so he hires a western tutor, Mr. Muir (Claude King), to expand the horizons of the grandson (Sonny Loy). The whole business recalls the tutelage of Pu Yi, the last emperor of the Qing Dynasty, by western scholar Reginald Johnston—played by Peter O’Toole in Bertolucci’s film. Wait, did I say recalls? Maybe it anticipates it—if you go by the stage-play date. Johnston didn’t show up in the Forbidden City until 1919.

The grandson winds up in an arranged marriage (“Your wife was born last week”), grows (and is played by Lon Chaney), but his wife dies during childbirth, apologizing that she did not give him a son. So he becomes determined to raise his daughter as both daughter and son.

Those are the prologues, and it sets up the rest. He raises a daughter more headstrong than normal, and intrigued by the West rather than afraid of it.

I like how the romance begins. Nang Ping and her coterie are playing within the palace grounds when they hear an aged minstrel and over the wall send him coins and flower petals in appreciation. The flower petals continue after the musician has left and his spot replaced by a westerner, Basil Gregory (Ralph Forbes), driving an automobile, who suddenly finds himself showered. Intrigued, he looks over the wall, the girls scatter, but a romance with Nang Ping is started.

But then Mr. Wu promises his daughter’s hand to another.

And Basil’s family plans to return to England.

Even though Nang Ping is pregnant.

Yeah, it goes far fast. We also see the lovers kiss, which the U.S. Production Code soon wouldn’t allow between characters of different races. Even if, as here, the actors were the same race.

I am curious where the story would’ve gone if Wu hadn’t intervened. Would Basil have manned up enough to admit to his family, including his racist father (who calls Chinese “chinks”), that he loves Nang Ping, who is bearing his child? Could he have said this to her father? Would they have eloped? Was she even ready for a world outside the palace grounds? 

Instead, a gardener overhears/sees the lovers and reports back to Daddyo. He’s rewarded with a knife in the gut. Up to this point, Mr. Wu has seemed benevolent, but I guess ravaged daughters do tend to stir up the blood. Plus, per the ancient rites, Nang Ping has to die for her transgressions or suffer in the afterlife. She goes willingly. But that’s not enough for Wu. He wants to make Basil and his family pay.

Throughout, I kept wondering why Louise Dresser as Basil’s mother got second-billing. The role isn’t much. Was she that big of a star back then? But in the final half hour it makes sense: Oh, she’s the hero.

Racism/ageism
After killing his daughter, Wu has Basil tied up, kidnaps Basil’s sister, Hilda (Gertrude Olmstead), and then presents Mrs. Gregory with a Sophie’s Choice 50 years before “Sophie’s Choice”: Which or your children will die? We get much silent-film handwringing before Mrs. Gregory decides. She says Basil would want Hilda to live. Wu smiles. But before he can bang the gong, signifying that Basil should be put to death, Mrs. Gregory motions him back … and then stabs him in the gut. Nice! In a sense, the movie reveals not only how far we’ve progressed in racial matters but how much we’ve regressed in ageist matters. The old dowdy lady gets to be the hero! You’d never see that now. Unless she’s Michelle Yeoh or somewhat like that. Unless she’s not dowdy.

Wu still attempts to bang the gong, but what stops him this time isn’t Mrs. Gregory but the ghostly image/memory of Nang Ping. This he accepts, dies, and joins her in the afterlife. Meaning a British family went to China, the son impregnates a Chinese girl, and the only ones who die are the Chinese. So it goes.

What was the western fascination with China during this period? It’s all over early Hollywood movies: from Tong wars to Chinatown tours; from evil mandarins to homily-spewing detectives. The fascination just didn't include actually hiring Chinese people to play Chinese characters.

Mr. Wu plots, but a hero arises...