This is the ultimate Marlene Dietrich vehicle. There is a pretty good movie around her, but her performance and the photographing of her are extraordinary. She does crushed, she does hopeful, she does triumphant, she does wicked and worldly, she does innocent, and looks convincing in every transformation. Whether she was acting or posing for the camera of Lee Garmes (whose Oscar was one of the most deserved in its history), it is impossible not to look at her in this film. Even more than in the other films Josef von Sternberg directed around her (beginning with "The Blue Angel" and "Morocco" and ending with the overstylized "The Devil is a Woman") she is the goddess by whom the audience is mesmerized.
Ostensibly the film is about a train traveling through China and a warlord raiding it, and there are a range of characters (including the slinky Anna May Wong and the idiotic American out of his depths played hilariously by Eugene Pallette) but the film is really about Dietrich's demand for unconditional trust. It took more than one man to change the heroine's name to "Shanghai Lily" she tells Clive Brook, the man who at some time in the past had not trusted her. In the film she demands a gigantic leap of faith from him. It is his second chance and by now there is quite a sordid reputation attached to her. And he is a mere mortal--how can he understand a goddess?
Dietrich's greatest scene, one of the most perfectly conceived, lit, photographed, and acted is first smoking and trembling, then praying alone in her compartment after meeting with the bandit/warlord (Warner Oland). The very last scene, which I will not specify, is also perfect. Von Sternberg has to get most of the credit for that. (Also for the more delirious final scene of "Morocco" which is psychologically similar but anything but subtle).
The best of the other highly stylized von Sternberg films built around Dietrich are Morocco, Dishonored, and The Scarlet Empress (Blonde Venus and The Blue Angel are also stylized and have very famous musical numbers, but have more mortal Dietrich characters). The screenplay is by Jules Furthman, who also wrote two of the great Bogart-Bacall pictures (To Have and Have Not, The Big Sleep) for Howard Hawks.
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