Tod Browning's direction places special emphasis on Chaney's face, which is frequently filmed in close up as he menaces Molly and her beau. Chaney was a gloriously melodramatic actor who loved to grimace and sneer. Browning uses Chaney's intensity to push the movie to a more brutal level than typical of Hollywood studio silent productions. While the crime drama with Molly and Dapper Bill is conventional and a bit bland, Chaney's presence as Black Mike gives the proceedings a palpable sense of evil. During the final sequence, a battle breaks out within a Chinese store, destroying nearly everything within the store's walls, but during this scene, the print luckily exhibits only has a modest amount of damage and remains very watchable.
Shadows is much less substantial than Outside the Law .
It tells the story of a Chinese laundryman named Yen Sin. After he's cast ashore on the shore of a small fishing town, he struggles to survive while faced with daunting prejudice from the villagers. Nonetheless, Yen Sin stays. Hunched over submissively, Chaney's portrayal of Yen Sin is such a broad caricature that he's difficult to watch nowadays. Most disappointing, however, is the movie's final sequence, where the innately good Yen Sin, while struggling on his death bed, manages to fix most of the town's problems.