THE SHANGHAI GESTURE (1941)

Set in an international gambling palace, and loaded with sexual perversion, interracial trysts, suicidal debtors and many varieties of love-for-sale, Hollywood had wanted to adapt John Colton’s extravagant melodramatic nonsense since it hit the stage in the mid-‘20s. And while the main storyline isn’t prohibitively objectionable: exotic club-owning madame digs up scandal to blackmail a developer (her former lover!) planning to tear down her business & erect a new city-approved development; the human interest stories swirling about were awash with Production Code no-noes. Too much even for Pre-Code days.  (Today, it's more problematic for the use of YellowFace.) But once screenwriter Jules Furthman (or some collaborator) figured out how to keep what was needed by watering down ‘Mother’ Goddam to ‘Mother’ Gin Sling, the key to bowdlerizing without losing tawdry essence was clear. As the developer's rebellious daughter, top-billed Gene Tierney hasn’t yet got the range for her big outbursts, but looks so young & gorgeous as she loses borrowed booty to Ona Munson’s ‘chinoiserie’ Madame, it hardly matters. And Victor Mature, in his brief dewy period, has a fine time flinging a flowing white cloak around to steal a secret kiss. Everyone else in a decidedly eccentric cast (Walter Huston, Eric Blore, Albert Bassermann, John Abbott, a mute Maria Ouspenskaya, Mike Mazurki with rickshaw, croupier Marcel Dalio) as staff, customers, officials, are all you could wish. And what glam production values for an indie! Producer Arnold Pressburger*, newly exiled in Hollywood, choose well in then out-of-fashion Josef von Sternberg to direct, knowing he’d emphasize surface texture over sense, and got him to keep it all on the move. So switch off the right side of your brain, find a good print to do it justice, and enjoy.

DOUBLE-BILL: *German exile Pressburger used fellow ex-pats on all his subsequent Hollywood pics: Fritz Lang for HANGMEN ALSO DIE!/’43; René Clair on IT HAPPENED TOMORROW/’44; Douglas Sirk’s with A SCANDAL IN PARIS/’46. What a batting average!

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Note Sternberg’s directing credit puts A.S.C. (American Society of Cinematographers) on his title card. Presumably to signify equal responsibility with lenser Paul Ivano.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: By one reckoning, this could be considered von Sternberg’s last film. Only a few specialty scenes in DUEL IN THE SUN/’47; demoted by Howard Hughes’ torturous ‘post’ work on JET PILOT (begun ‘49, released ‘57); MACAO/’52, an enjoyable noir, much ‘doctored’ by Nicholas Ray; and the experimental ANATAHAN/’53 would follow.