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OPEN CLASSIC CINEMA · 500

Drifting

192370 minUnited States

Video edition: YouTube
Original language: No spoken dialogue. Intertitles: English.
This copy runs: 84:33
Subtitles: No subtitle track in this language

Languages and subtitles

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Synopsis

An opium dealer in Shanghai wants to leave the trade but needs money to escape and help an ailing friend. Following an expected shipment inland, she meets a man posing as a mining engineer while investigating the drug network. Their attraction develops across concealed identities, forcing her to choose between the business keeping her afloat and a possible different life.

Cast

Priscilla Dean

Cassie Cook/Lucille Preston

Matt Moore

Capt. Arthur Jarvis

Wallace Beery

Jules Repin

J. Farrell MacDonald

Murphy

DirectorsTod Browning

Inspirations

Tod Browning adapted the Broadway play by John Colton and Daisy H. Andrews. Priscilla Dean leads a cast that includes Wallace Beery and Anna May Wong, with the film's Chinese setting filtered through the assumptions of a Hollywood crime melodrama.

Sources and availability

General references identify the work and its copy. A reference beside an editorial section is linked to the claims checked in that section.

Wikipedia — film reference Duke Center for the Study of the Public Domain — US term reference

Work catalogued as public domain in the United States.

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Availability checked on September 10, 2026.

Photograph credit

Photographs cropped, resized and optimized as WebP, displayed in monochrome.

Priscilla Dean — This image is available from the United States Library of Congress 's Prints and Photographs division under the digital ID ggbain.35305 . This tag does not indicate the copyright status of the attached work. A normal copyright tag is still required. See Commons:Licensing . · Public domain
Matt Moore — Unknown author · Public domain
Wallace Beery — MGM studio photographer · Public domain
J. Farrell MacDonald — film screenshot · Public domain

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