Chan Is Missing is a 1982 American independent comedy-drama film directed, co-written, produced and edited by Wayne Wang. It is his solo directorial debut. The film, which is shot in black-and-white, is plotted as a mystery with noir undertones, and its title is a play on the Charlie Chan film series, which focuses on a fictional Chinese immigrant detective in Honolulu. It is widely recognized as the first Asian-American feature narrative film to gain both theatrical distribution and critical acclaim outside of the Asian American community.
Why It Rocks
While the early days of Hollywood did have some Asian-American stars, the film industry typically relied on Caucasians in disguise when depicting Asians -- which is also known as yellowface, just as offensive as blackface with African-Americans. But with the rise of the Civil Rights Movement, not only were African-Americans benefited, so were Asian-Americans, which led younger members to assert their independence and stake their claim to ethnic legitimacy. It's one of the distinguishing characteristics for this film, one of a handful of Asian-American films since the silent era. The film serves as an important statement on the Asian-American experience, and manages to avoid using the "Fu Manchu" and "Charlie Chan" stereotypes that previous films used with Asian characters.
While the film started as an experimental framework, the film shifted into a more feature-oriented mode. With a premise tied to the search for an elusive Chan Hung, the film became a snapshot of San Francisco's Chinatown, a cross-section that ranged from community service organizations to businesses to homes and tourist sites like the Golden Gate Bridge. Along the way Michael Chin’s camera captured souvenir parlors, martial arts movie theaters, classrooms, government offices, and the cramped alleys and apartments of Chinatown.
While Wang wanted to "invert film conventions," the cast and crew guided him through the many layers and complications of Chinatown's life. Due to being an outsider himself, Wang could provide a fresh angle on overly familiar locations and situations. His documentary impulses, his love of faces, particularly of the elderly, shine through in many sequences. Manilatown Senior Center provides the backdrop for some of the film’s most moving footage: portraits of members dancing, sitting, staring with stoic expressions into the camera. Almost all of the scene was shot on the spur of the moment.
Chan Is Missing is a film attuned to the fortuitous, the accidental, the stumbled-across. Like the opening shot, filmed through the windshield of Wood’s cab as he drives down a street, the reflections of the buildings marking a perfect line between light and dark, between blindness and sight, between insight and confusion.
Despite the film barely having a genuine plot, with the only true plot being that Jo (Wood May) and his nephew Steve (Hayashi) need to talk to Chan Hung about $4,000 they want to invest in subleasing a taxi license, it's clear that the film's meant to be more of a slice-of-life picture, and that fact that the film features Asians' daily lives in non-stereotypical main roles feels refreshing.
The true core of the film is a remarkable handheld shot filmed in one take on a pier near the Golden Gate Bridge. In the shot, which lasts almost three minutes, Jo confronts Steve about Chan, in the process exposing the central conflicts between their generations. Hayashi himself would later call this scene, "[his] proudest moment as an actor".
On top of that, Chan himself is meant to serve as a symbol, considering Jo and Steve circled around their target, discussing different aspects of his character: immigrant, husband, father, adulterer, worker, anti-Communist, dropout, even potential criminal.
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