Le drame de Shanghaï

This movie was shown last night (10/30/98) at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City as part of a G. W. Pabst retrospective. The date of the movie was 1938 and it was very evocative of the period. Although shot in Saigon (instead of Hong Kong), it appeared to be very reflective of what I imagine was the Hong Kong atmosphere at the time - including good references to the many Russian ex-patriots there and their desperation. Not a perfect movie but one to be seen, if available.

This is a very complicated story and the viewer -not familiar with the situation in China at the time- may sometimes feel lost.The first thirty minutes reveal an average script,which is going all over the place: a chanteuse who sings a little song every five minutes,her daughter in a fitting boarding-school (Gabrielle Dorziat as the headmistress,a three-minute part),a people hero,Tchang, a French journalist,an organization ,the "black dragon" ,this is really a Shanghai mixture.

In fact,this is as far-fetched as "Fraulein Doctor " aka "Salonique Nid d'Espions" which Pabst made two years before .What saves this film is the cast (Louis Jouvet,Raymond Rouleau) Some of Henri Jeanson's lines ("compared to our passports,the true ones look false!" "why didn't you do that fifteen years ago?" (kill me) )are up to scratch;Pabst 's directing is sometimes excellent: the free-for-all in the night club ;the bloody passport bullets went through;and most of all,the death of Kay in the jubilant crowd.