bragant Review of The Shanghai Gesture

The Shanghai Gesture (1941)

Bizarre, Oneiric, Magnificent!!!! DO NOT MISS THIS!!!!

[10/10 · 6 November 2009]

This masterwork - unleashed on a bewildered American public shortly after Pearl Harbor - is without doubt one of the most lurid, corrupt and depraved motion pictures ever produced in Old Hollywood - and there is not a curse word or a nude scene to be found! This movie seems to exude a hallucinatory atmosphere reeking of opium smoke, stained silk and half-finished cocktails. You will literally not believe what you are seeing - and that's not a bad thing. An independent production, THE SHANGHAI GESTURE took over 15 years to make it from Broadway to the big screen. The hit play's themes of sexual depravity, prostitution, greed and drug addiction of course could not be presented in a direct fashion due to the Production Code, and various scripts kicked around for a decade before Austrian producer Arnold Pressburger acquired the rights and hired his friend, Josef Von Sternberg, to direct. A legend thanks to his discovery of Marlene Dietrich, the fabled director of THE BLUE ANGEL had fallen on hard times by 1940 - he had not completed a film in several years, had suffered a nervous breakdown, and had expended the bulk of his fortune to help about 30 members of his extended family flee the Third Reich for Switzerland. Sternberg's autocratic mannerisms and insistence on absolute control did nothing to make him more employable. THE SHANGHAI GESTURE was to be Sternberg's last major Hollywood production. The budget for this film was far less than what he had once enjoyed at Paramount, but despite this limitation, Sternberg infuses every frame with his unique look, as well as giving us one of the most astonishing crane shots in the history of the cinema. This film also contains some of the most gorgeous close-ups ever, and the massive casino set is justly revered. This is a movie you watch in black-and-white but remember in color - it is THAT beautiful (note the review below where the writer discusses the "gold" mirrored screens and "black" lacquer of Mother's dining room). The plot revolves around the degradation of Victoria Charteris (aka "Poppy Smith") at the hands of the sinister Mother Gin Sling, owner of the most luxurious gambling den in Shanghai. Mother seeks to destroy Poppy as vengeance against Poppy's father, Sir Guy, who has ordered the closure of Mother's casino, but in the end she gets more than she bargained for...A very young and celestially beautiful Gene Tierney handles Poppy's transformation from sophisticated femme du monde to coarse, drunken slut with aplomb, while Ona Munson turns in the performance of her life as "Mother." Kudos also must go to Victor Mature, who reeks of sleaze and sex as his "Dr." Omar leads Poppy down the primrose path...To those who decry this film as "racist," please bear in mind that Sternberg had traveled frequently in East Asia in the 1930s, was a connoisseur of Chinese art, and knew exactly what he was doing. This movie depicts a pleasure- and money-mad European colonial society in a state of total moral bankruptcy, a world on the verge of complete collapse from its own inner rot and decay, and it cannot be a coincidence that European colonialism in Asia was destroyed by the Japanese within weeks of this film's release. Sternberg is very careful to depict the colonials as the racist, ignorant fools that they for the most part were (note the scene where the etiolated casino money-counter uses pidgin despite the fact that the Chinese man to whom he speaks is obviously fluent in the King's English), and in Shanghai, corruption is a way of life for all, regardless of race or nationality. This film is in fact a tale of revenge against the European occupier and his exploitations. Sternberg was a master of indirection and implication, and every line here has two and sometimes three meanings. You will find it very hard to believe that this was actually made in 1941, and you will wonder how it got past the censors. Years ahead of its time, this should be considered the first true "noir" and deserves to be much more widely known than it is. A dreamlike masterwork like nothing you have ever seen, you will not be able to stop watching this once you begin. Remember, Mother Gin Sling's casino never closes...