Shanghai Express ***** (1932, Marlene Dietrich, Clive Brook, Warner Oland, Anna May Wong, Eugene Pallette) – Movie Review 2950

Director Josef von Sternberg’s richly enjoyable 1932 romantic adventure again stars his protégée Marlene Dietrich, who appears on her finest form as a notorious ‘lady of the sleeping cars’, Shanghai Lil. The infamously loose woman is seized and kept hostage by Henry Chang (Warner Oland)’s Chinese revolutionary warriors, along with a trainload of passengers while on a dangerous train ride from Peking to Shanghai.

Her fellow detainees include Hui Fey (Anna May Wong), Sam Salt (Eugene Pallette) and Lil’s old lover Captain Donald ‘Doc’ Harvey (Clive Brook), the British Army doctor whom she is ready to risk all to save.

Screen-writer Jules Furthman’s stirringly romantic adventure tale, the luminous, ever more unreal Marlene beauty, the colourful performances, Hans Dreier’s lovely production designs and Lee Garmes’s gleamingly haunting Oscar-winning black and white cinematography add up to a breathtakingly stylish film.

This, the third of the star’s American films with her beloved Svengali-style director von Sternberg, following Morocco (1930) and Dishonored (1931), was the biggest hit of them, grossing a then huge $3 million.

Also in the cast are Lawrence Grant (the Reverend Mr Carmichael), Louise Closser Hale (Mrs Haggerty), Gustav von Seyffertitz (Eric Baum), Emile Chautard (Major Lenard), Claude King, Willie Fung, Leonard Carey and Forrester Harvey.

Furthman’s screenplay is based on the story by Harry Hervey. Furthman is responsible for the classic screenplays of Only Angels Have Wings, To Have and Have Not, Rio Bravo, the 1935 Mutiny on the Bounty and the 1946 The Big Sleep.

Ace cinematographer Lee Garmes won his only Oscar for Shanghai Express, though he was also nominated for Morocco (1930), Since You Went Away (1944) and The Big Fisherman (1959).

Director von Sternberg also made The Blue Angel (1930) with Dietrich.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2950

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com