Shanghai Gesture
by Josef von Sternberg
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Actor: Gene Tierney, Ona Munson, Phyllis Brooks, Victor Mature, Walter HustonDirector: Josef von Sternberg
Brand: Image Entertainment
Writer: Josef von Sternberg
Producer: Albert de Courville
Producer: Arnold Pressburger
Writer: Geza Herczeg
Writer: John Colton
Writer: Jules Furthman
Writer: Karl Vollmöller
DVD: Region Code 0
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono; English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
Format: Black & White, DVD, Full Screen, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 95 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2006-03-07
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Image Entertainment
DVD Reviews of Shanghai Gesture
DVD Review: As ripe as a fetid orchid, and almost as pleasurable to watch
Summary: 3 Stars
Odd flowers come to mind. The Shanghai Gesture seems like another of Josef von Sternberg's ripely fetid orchids, fascinating to observe but which can leave a nasty smell in your nose if you take a sniff. No, perhaps it's like a pitcher plant from the Discovery Channel, cut open so we can watch a fly slide down into a sweet smelling pool of liquid and then be slowly digested while it struggles for life. Wow, that purple prose is almost as good as some of what von Sternberg comes up with. He might have been a master of mise en scene, whatever that catch-all phrase may mean, but his movies can be so ripe, lush and oblivious to what makes a good movie that in some perverse way at least a handful of his films are still interesting. The Scarlet Empress, for example, is so over the top with such a sly and amusingly lewd performance by Marlene Dietrich that even Criterion has blessed it. The Shanghai Gesture is not all that good, but it is so seriously fervid, so stuffed with oozing melodrama and contains so many fascinating performances, some excellent and some not, that the movie just keeps striding through its 99 minutes.
We're in Shanghai in the International Settlement. Mother Gin Sling, a dragon lady who rose from poverty and enslaved prostitution now owns the most elegant, the largest, and the richest casino in town. She's a powerful woman. She knows everything that needs knowing about the important foreign men in Shanghai who come to be flattered and gamble at her establishment. She knows quite a bit about their wives, too. Sir Guy Charteris, however, who is new to Shanghai, is buying up property to turn into a rich new development, and that will include Mother Gin Sling's establishment. Charteris has a lovely young daughter, just out of finishing school. She's beautiful, impulsive, spoiled and is used to her father's money. She loves the idea of dark thrills. She's soon to become a pawn between Mother Gin Sling and Charteris, who doesn't realize that long ago the young Chinese girl he married and lost was...yes, Mother Gin Sling. `Mother' will get her revenge on this man, all right, but Charteris has a secret of his own. You'll never guess, of course. It all comes together at an elegant Chinese New Year's dinner party hosted by `Mother,' with firecrackers going off outside in the streets, girls in basket cages hoisted up outside her window to be bid on by eager rickshaw drivers and cold revenge served up as the main course
The quality of the movie is as variable as the acting. Walter Huston as Charteris is excellent. He was a commanding actor and always interesting to watch. He might be remembered by most nowadays as the old coot Howard, smarter than them all, in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, but watch him in Dodsworth. As Sam Dodsworth he's touching and unforgettable.
Ona Munson as the vengeance-driven, hardened Mother Gin Sling, however, is just caricature. At times her line reading sounds like Mae West was playing the part. Sternberg gives her a lacquered hairdo that would make Medusa envious. As the smooth Doctor Omar, one of Mother Gin Sling's many corrupt employees, Victor Mature does a surprisingly good job. With his fleshy lips, sleepy eyes and wearing evening clothes, he looks the part. He has to contend with some silly lines to say, a ridiculous fez to wear and what appears to be a silk bed sheet tossed around his shoulders. Gene Tierney, beautiful, carefully photographed, stunning to see, simply can't act. She manages as the spoiled Victoria Charteris, but as the corrupted Poppy Smith, even when she's trying her best, she just can't handle the part. The secondary actors range from awkward, obvious portrayals to the fine work of Eric Blore as a genuinely offensive sycophant who belongs to `Mother,' Albert Basserman as an aged and worldly commissioner and Mike Mazurki as a big, big Chinese coolee who does with sullen pleasure what `Mother' tells him to.
To give some sympathy to Sternberg, the Hollywood Code required him to make Victoria's downfall the result of being led by Doctor Omar to gambling and liquor. This makes her degradation at the hands of Mother Gin Sling seem a little lightweight. In the play, of course, Omar led her to sex and opium.
Still, you can't beat the last scene in the movie. The secrets have been exposed, a shooting has taken place, the `best' people in Shanghai have fled `Mother's' party and the fireworks are exploding. Amidst all this the sweaty, bare-chested Mazurki turns to Sir Guy as they stand in the crowded street and asks, "Likee Chinee New Year?"
The DVD is barebones and isn't pristine but it's easy to watch.
Description of Shanghai Gesture
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