The Shanghai Gesture (1941)

The Shanghai Gesture
Directed by Josef von Sternberg
Written by Josef von Sternberg, Jules Furthman, and Geza Herczeg based on a play by John Colton
1941/USA
Arnold Pressburger Films
First viewing/Amazon Prime Instant Video

[box] Poppy: The other places are like kindergardens compared with this. It smells so incredibly evil! I didn’t think such a place existed except in my own imagination. It has a ghastly familiarity like a half-remembered dream. *Anything* could happen here… any moment…[/box]

I thought I had seen Josef von Sternberg’s weirdest film when I saw The Scarlet Empress. And then came The Shanghai Gesture.

The plot is convoluted and I think is missing big chunks due to censorship problems.  The setting is Shanghai.  The opening title makes clear that this is not meant to be contemporary Shanghai or even a real place.

“Mother” Gin Sling (Ona Munson) runs a gamling house and den of (unspecified) iniquity in the foreign section of the City.  City officials have ordered her to shut down to please mogul Sir Guy Charteris (Walter Huston) who wants to do something or other with the land.  Gin Sling’s ears perk up at the name and she begins to scheme how she will defy the order.

Meanwhile, beautiful and elegant young “Poppy Smith” (Gene Tierney) drops into Gin Sling’s with a friend. She tries her hand at gambling and wins, announcing that she will never return.  But, for Poppy, Gin Sling’s is like the Hotel California.  She is unable to free herself from its grip due to her lust for pretty boy wastrel Dr. Omar (Victor Mature), her gambling addiction, and some unstated alcohol or substance abuse problem.  The poised Poppy rapidly racks up a huge debt to “Mother” and degenerates into a slovenly harridan.

We gradually learn that “Mother” has something quite specific against Sir Guy and that “Poppy” has become the key part of a revenge plot.  The entire affair climaxes at
“Mother’s” New Years Eve dinner, to which all her many enemies have been invited.  With a cast of thousands including Maria Ouspenskaya, Albert Basserman, Eric Blore, and Mike Mazurki (as a sinister rickshaw driver!) and Marcel Dalio as a croupier.

The whole thing plays out like a fever dream, including one memorable moment when half-dressed white girls are displayed in hanging baskets and offered for sale to Chinese sailors (just fooling says “Mother”).  The entire picture seems crowded with thousands of extras in every corner of the city streets and the casino, so much so that von Sternberg specifically honors them with a title card.  The art direction and costumes are lavish and bizarre.

The cast of pros in general is pretty good but poor Gene Tierney could have done with several more years of acting lessons.  She looks gorgeous but does not make a convincing degenerate or handle her many, many crying scenes in a believable way.

In short, this is one glorious mess and should be approached with a sense of humor and high camp detectors at the ready.

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