The Toll of the Sea was a motion picture produced by the Technicolor Motion Picture Corporation, and released by Metro Pictures in 1922. It was the second Technicolor feature, the first color feature made in Hollywood, and the first color feature anywhere that did not require a special projector to be shown. The original camera negative survives today except for the final reel, making it one of the best examples of the two-color Technicolor process. Technicolor is a three-strip color film process pioneered in the 1930s by the Technicolor Corporation, a company created by the husband-and-wife team of Herbert and Natalie Kalmus. ... ...

The plot was a variation of the Madame Butterfly story, reset in China instead of Japan. Madama Butterfly (Madam Butterfly) is an opera in three acts (originally two acts) by Giacomo Puccini to an Italian libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa, based on the book by John Luther Long and the drama by David Belasco. ...