The Shanghai Gesture (1941)

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Directed by Josef von Sternberg.

Starring Phyllis Brooks, Walter Huston, Victor Mature, Ona Munson, Gene Tierney.

Josef von Sternberg made his first return to exotic Shanghai since 1932's Shanghai Express in this baroque conflagration, based on a 1925 play by John Colton that required 30 revisions before it was sufficiently sanitized to pass muster with Hays Office censors. The film takes place in the gambling den of Mother Gin Sling (Ona Munson), who finds her casino threatened with closing by stuffed shirt English financier Sir Guy Charteris (Walter Huston). Gin Sling knows that the key to keeping her casino open is to dig up some dirt on Sir Guy, and it's quick in coming. She finds that Sir Guy was compelled to leave China in a hurry some time in the past, stealing his wife's money and plotting to kill her. Sir Guy ended up abandoning his wife in China and leaving her with an infant daughter. She also finds out that Sir Guy's grown-up daughter, Poppy (Gene Tierney, is a frequent and deeply indebted guest of Gin Sling's casino. Gin Sling is now ready to blackmail Sir Guy into keeping her casino open. He tracks down his daughter and tries to convince her to leave town. But Poppy refuses to budge, having fallen in love with Doctor Omar (Victor Mature). ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide

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Review by All Movie Guide

All Movie Guide

lost interest.

Although not much liked in its day, Joseph Von Sternberg's final great film is a "must" for anyone sharing the director's appetite for the sensually exotic. It doesn't really make much difference at this late date that most of playwright John Colton's then highly censurable characters have been severely watered down; that Colton's brothel owner, Madam Goddam, has become a gambling establishment proprietor named Madam Gin Slin (Ona Munson); that a torrid and adulterous love affair is turned into a broken marriage; or that the heroine's drug dependency instead becomes an addiction to gambling. The Shanghai Gesture, in fact, is much less Colton that it is Von Sternberg: here is the moody mise-en-scene, the fluid camera work and the erotic obsession. And, to his eternal credit, the director even manages to obtain sterling performances from such studio manufactured personalities as Gene Tierney and Victor Mature. As for Ona Munson, the erstwhile Belle Watling of Gone With the Wind is all caked makeup and desperation and not entirely the whore with a heart of gold that may have been intended. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

Tags: blackmail , prostituteprostitution , criminal , daughter , gambling
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