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Thursday, March 23, 2023

PEKING EXPRESS (1951)

Paramount’s third version of this exotic Jules Furthman/Harry Hervey adventure reverses direction from SHANGHAI EXPRESS/’32, the original Sternberg/Dietrich classic, so we now start the dangerous trip at Shanghai station and train to Peking.  And that’s not the only thing they get backwards.  (Version No. 2, NIGHT PLANE FROM CHUNGKING/’43, not seen here, is a cheap programmer.)  But first, here’s the one good switch: Thanks to political changes, the bad guys no longer warring feudal lords but the newly victorious Chinese Communists.  And they aren’t even the worst element, that’d be local renegade bandits, merciless villains who interrupt the journey with a deadly surprise attack before grabbing United Nations Doctor Joseph Cotten and past-partner/fallen gal Corinne Calvet, along with Catholic Father Edmund Gwenn and other assorted business & political bigwigs.  Made on a B+ budget, director William Dieterle uses plenty of stock footage and background clips from the original (some city street scenes look darn familiar) between endless exposition in train corridors & compartments.  Mostly about stolen drugs Cotten brought in with him/mostly in the shadow of slanted Venetian blinds.  Not really bad, but you’d never guess what you’re missing if you watch this instead of von Sternberg: one of the great Hollywood entertainments, Dietrich’s top grosser, and a film that did much to move the bar past Early Talkie technical problems and usher in Classic Hollywood Golden Age.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK: As you’d expect, SHANGHAI EXPRESS.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2019/08/shanghai-express-1932.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Twenty years after SHANGHAI EXPRESS, PEKING still casts one major Chinese character with a White Guy.  Easy to forget just how long YellowFace remained a Hollywood practice, late as 1985 with Joel Grey in REMO WILLIAMS.  Was that the last one?

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