Shanghai Express

Many consider "The Shanghai Express" the best von Sternberg/ Dietrich film. Perhaps. I certainly agree that it is a very good movie. The story is a bit trivial: two lovers meet again after five years. They were separated due to the lack of faith he had in her. This film is a journey. In fact, two kinds of journeys: a physical one, since the set is a moving train, and a psychological one, since during this journey Captain Harvey (Clive Brook) gains fate, essential to a love relationship. The train movements seem to indicate the attraction Captain Harvey and Shanghai Lily (Marlene Dietrich) feel for each other. This movie gives us one of the most beautiful images in movie history: Dietrich in the dark, smoking a cigarette, with the famous light that gave her that famous "butterfly shadow".

When Josef von Sternberg's Shanghai Express chugs out of Peking, squeezing through a teeming alleyway as it picks up steam, it marks the start of a momentous journey – not only for its motley of passengers but for Hollywood. In this fourth teaming of the Svengali-like director and his Trilby of a star – Marlene Dietrich – they reach the zenith of their legendary collaboration and strike a template for the kind of movies America would do best and like best: voluptuous hybrids of adventure and intrigue, romance and raffish fun.

Leaving for Shanghai to operate on the stricken British Consul-General, army physician Clive Brook climbs aboard only to find the woman he loved but lost five years ago (Dietrich). Now, however, she goes by another appellation; as she explains, in the script's most emblematic line, `It took more than one man to change my name to Shanghai Lily.' Her presence on the train, and that of one of her sisters-in-sin (Anna May Wong) is cause for scandal and indignation among the other passengers: prim boarding-house proprietress Louise Closser Hale (with her pooch Waffles smuggled on board); sputtering man of the cloth Lawrence Grant; sardonic gambling man Eugene Pallette; a Frenchman; a German; and the inscrutable, pre-Charlie Chan Warner Oland.

Soon, China being embroiled in a civil war, they have more to worry about than Dietrich's morals. Rebel troops halt the journey lead the passengers, one by one, to be interrogated by their warlord, who turns out to be Oland. The various eccentricities, secrets and agendas of the passengers get brought into the open, affording Oland opportunity to avenge any number of racial and personal slights. But finally he finds what he's been looking for – a valuable hostage to serve as a bargaining chip – in Brook. And from then on Shanghai Express becomes a drama of reckoning, with all the characters scheming to save their own (and occasionally one anothers') skins.

None of the players can be faulted, except for Brook, who gives a dead-earnest impersonation of the stick that stirs the fire; that Dietrich should have fallen for him is like believing several impossible things before breakfast. (Cary Grant was around in 1932; too bad Sternberg didn't catch up with him until his next movie, Blonde Venus.) But in his handling of Dietrich, Sternberg all but patents what came to be called star treatment. Stunningly lighted, her feline face is caught in a breathtaking range of moods and attitudes. But she's more than a passive vessel for the director's intentions – her blend of worldly savvy and steely spine is hers and hers alone.

She isn't the only beneficiary of Sternberg's eye. He shoots the movie in a haunting, intense chiaroscuro (few movies from this early in the 1930s were so richly and handsomely photographed). He cuts from scene to scene teasingly, layering new shots on fading images, adding a little rubato to relate incidents of the story to one another. Shanghai Express may be the first masterpiece of the sound era, one that's still no less extraordinary today than it was 70 years ago.

Fourth out of seven Dietrich-von Sternberg's collaborations, SHANGHAI EXPRESS confirms with Hollywood's habitually insensitive appropriation of exotic stories, this time, the victim is a civil war-ridden China, the entire film sets during the treacherous journey of the titular express, chugging from Beijing to Shanghai, but apparently, von Sternberg cannot lay his hands on finding enough Mandarin-speaking extras, so all the Chinese bit players are sporting Cantonese with a weird accent that even confounds this reviewer's Chinese ears, and some of them are occasionally being manhandled unceremoniously, notably in an earlier scene by a miffed Charlie Chan, no, actually it is Henry Chang (Oland), an Eurasian warlord of Chinese rebellions with a costly price tag on his head.

Essentially, the movie is Ms. Dietrich's star vehicle, kit up with astounding sartorial creations from Travis Banton, and looks gorgeously photogenic under von Sternberg's meticulous coordination, she plays a courtesan named Shanghai Lily, of all people, she chances upon her ex-lover, British Captain Donald "Doc" Harvey (a stiff upper-lipped Brook) on the express, while the pair's romance duly begins to rekindle, Chang and his rebellious rabble hijacks the train and detains Doc as a valuable hostage, soon, it falls to two women's hands to take the situation out of jeopardy, one is Shanghai Lily, who acquiesces to Chang's commander for the sake of Doc's safety, another is her companion, a Chinese working girl Hui Fei (a piercing-looking Wong, the first Chinese-American star in Hollywood), who successfully lands on her feet after a vengeful assassination.

Sardonically, the rest western passengers are more or less one-note laughing-stocks, casual scorn is cast upon an opium merchant and self-professed "invalid" Eric Baum (von Seyffertitz), a priggish Reverend Carmichael (Grant) and a congenital bettor Sam Salt (Pallette), whereas Henry Chang is accountable for all the contempt, conversely it is the gamble of love and faith that transpires after its torpid escape hubbub, and it is Shanghai Lily's clandestine repentance finally softens the film's cynical temperament and veers into the usual trajectory of a cheesy romance, but what an extravaganza is on show, von Sternberg's expressionistic idiom would totally normalize the standards we view movies even today, whether it concerns narrative cohesion, the marshaling of a huge set, or spectacular montage arrangements, no wonder audience at that time could rapturously fall under his spell, SHANGHAI EXPRESS is the highest grossing movie of 1932, even today, it demands our collective gaze.

I have a soft spot in my heart for movies about trains and about other modes of transportation as well, but there's something very special about a train when it is properly handled for the cinema. I could go through a very long list of films featuring trains that I love and that were produced over a long span of time, but I won't, and you'll thank me for that. I've added this gem to the top of that list, or at least near the top.

Despite the fact that the entire film is produced in either a Hollywood lot or a train depot in San Bernardino, I feel that I am in China during very turbulent and dangerous times. Thanks to the special skills of director Josef von Sternberg, the prevailing sense of impending peril is very strong. Warner Oland, although not even half Chinese, is very convincing as the menacing rebel leader. The rest of the cast is excellent as well. Both Dietrich and Brook project an outward appearance of stiffness and toughness to the dangerous world around them, but we learn along the hazardous and uncertain journey that their exterior façade is nothing but a thin disguise, and there lies a very vulnerable humanity deep within both of them. Dietrich gives another one of her many fascinating performances, full of psychological complexity. I love her.

I don't understand all of the harsh criticism of Clive Brook among the user reviews here that he is too wooden and mechanical. That is exactly the way he was supposed to play the role of a military doctor living in a world full of danger and of extreme hostility that is specifically aimed at him and his uniform. If we watch him closely, we will observe the decent, compassionate man behind the uniform. I thought that Dietrich and Brook make a smashing couple, especially when their outward and superficial veneer crumbles before our very eyes. This is good stuff!

The beautiful and mysterious Ana May Wong also provides complexity and depth to her deceiving, outward impression as Lily's courtesan companion, Hui Fei. Again, we must not judge Hui Fei based on her exterior demeanor alone because deep within her lies a very brave and determined dedication to her country and to her society. Her exchanges with Mrs. Hegarty (Louise Closser Hale), the prim and proper boarding house owner, are most entertaining. I'm usually not focused on hairdos, but check these out, especially Hegarty's. Holy mackerel.

As you will see, none of the characters are what they seem to be at first glance. That is only part of what intrigues me about this movie. Please don't miss this extraordinary train, which only leaves the station on rare occasions. If you don't appreciate the ride as much as I do, you can always get off when the next cow decides to wander into its path but, considering the danger lurking in every direction, you will probably be safer on it than off it. Be forewarned and sit tight until the end. You won't be disappointed.

Shanghai Express is another von Sternberg masterpiece, probably not appreciated in his day (no academy awards) and lesser known that it should be in this day. Film theory says this film was an attempt to shade degrees of blackness. At one point, Marlene Dietrich's face blooms like a white flower out of the shadows, then closes again.

Beautiful is not a big enough word enough to describe the cinematography in Shanghai Express. The plot is dreamlike and unrealistic (Sternberg hated realism), the costumes are excessive (impossible to contain in Dietrich's supposed luggage), the atmosphere is deliciously layered with decadence, exoticism (good part for Anna Mae Wong) and deterioration (broken walls, slats and fantasies), punctuated by von Sternberg's caprice (chickens wandering in front of the train -- a symbol of Dietrich's husband's profession as a chicken farmer?).

The storyline is basically a broken romance seeking to be healed between Clive Brook and Dietrich or "Shanghai Lily," the naughty lady who has sold her body the past few years to keep herself in glittery costumes and furs.

The real "story" is "Dietrich and von Sternberg visit China" on some movie lot, on their way from or to Russia (The Scarlet Empress), Spain (The Devil is a Woman), North Africa (Morocco), or somewhere in the U.S. (Blonde Venus).

Gorgeous and lots of fun!