In 'Dragon Seed' Hollywood stars Katharine Hepburn, Walter Huston, Henry Travers, Agnes Moorhead and others appear in yellowface as the residents of a Chinese village standing up to it's Japanese occupiers. One wouldn't and shouldn't make a film this way today and it was problematic even at the time, but while 'The Good Earth' was able to ring some real pathos out of similar casting conventions 13 years earlier, 'Dragon Seed' fails to do so. Ms. Hepburn is particularly ill cast, the 37 year old Connecticut WASP is suppose to be a 20ish Chinses peasant girl, her husband is played by Turhan Bey, at 22 appropriate in age for his part, but of Turkish and Czech-Jewish origin. Ill conceived, overlong (around 2 and a half hours) and under cooked, this movie is supposed to be about strong feelings, but hardly invoked a one in me. **
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