Tensão em Shangai

Fascinating. Once I stumbled onto this movie, I could not stop watching it. When it was over, I had find out the title since I had missed the beginning. So I spent my Saturday morning checking the Turner Classic Movie T.V. schedule and then searching the internet to read about "The Shanghai Gesture" and it's director and actors/actresses.

One of my first questions: Who is that playing Mother Gin Sling? I know it is not Marlene Dietrich, but who? Answer: actress Ona Munson aka "Belle Watling" from "Gone With The Wind." I NEVER would have guessed. All sorts of familiar faces showed up in familiar and not so familiar roles. Like the croupier from "Casablanca," presiding over a much more sinister roulette table.

The visuals get you first. Images of a well of depravity leading to ruin and despair, yet glamorous all the way.

I liked the characterizations too. Walter Houston was excellent and believable as the "straight" businessman. Gene Tierney did an amazing transformation from decisive, strong, and elegant socialite to needy, pathetically transparent, and out of control young woman. Ona Munson played an impressive "dragon lady." Victor Mature's gigolo was appropriately jaded and manipulative.

It is a hypnotic and sensuous morality tale about the lure of sex, gambling, drugs, alcohol, and money and the danger of addiction to any of these to one's inner spirit. It also illustrates the high price of revenge, especially misplaced revenge.

A respectable film from the man who directed "The Blue Angel."

This film has an allure and a power that is hard to define. "The Shanghai Gesture" is not perfect, but it seizes hold of your attention and makes one think.

All Von Sternberg films deserve to be seen on the big screen for their visual beauty, but this one also benefits from videoviewing - you can wind it back at those moments when you HAVE to ask, "Did I just see/hear that???" Gene Tierney would evolve into a fine actress, but she's terrible here -think Elizabeth Berkeley in SHOWGIRLS - only MUCH better looking, so we forgive her. Walter Huston is magnificent as always. Oona Munson seizes her role between her teeth and relishes every bite. "The soles of my feet cut open and pebbles sown into them to stop me running away..." YUCK! The loopy plot makes imperfect sense due to many many cuts by the censors, and maybe Maria Ouspenskaya had more to do in some previous, even madder version of the film, but it's an oneiric, mind-reeling romp of staggering decadence and grandeur. One story has Little Jo directing from atop a crane, from which he would toss silver dollars to actors who pleased him, while he himself claims he directed it lying flat on his back. Neither would surprise me, seeing the result.

It was more than I had hoped for. Hollywood forties film noir glamour...yet everyone is rotten to the core and no one wins. Great performances from a time when stars could act and made the most of a script...and what script! They sure don´t make them like that anymore. Such ideas...the characters...so unusual but people like them have probably existed...

Lovely Gene Tierney transcending her enchanting beauty showing that looks aren´t enough. Victor Mature also playing someone of great charm and little character. I like how the beautiful leads aren´t the heroes. No one is! Ona Munson - so amazing and otherwordly! Where are the strong character parts for women like that today??

The sumptuous sets, everything steeped in mystery. What an atmosphere von Sternberg created...! I loved it! I want so see more films like this and I could see it again. Is it available on video?

Thank you Hollywood!

As you might guess from the title, The Shanghai Gesture takes place in Shanghai. Ona Munson stars as Mother Gin Sling, who runs a gambling casino. When you watch this drama, you might get the feeling that it's a little watered down to pass the censors, and that's because it was! The original story was much racier, including drugs, cursing, and prostitution, but it had to be dialed down dozens of times before the Hays Code let it pass through to movie audiences.

Hazel Rogers and Robert Stephanoff had their hands full preparing Ona in the makeup chair and with elaborate wig designs. Adding in lavish costumes by Oleg Cassini and Royer, and jewelry by Eugene Joseff, and she really is spectacular to look at. She's plays a villainess who lures Gene Tierney into her casino by offering unlimited credit and free drinks, in order to seek revenge on Gene's father Walter Huston. Why does Ona want revenge? And perhaps the better question is why does Gene become a gambling dope fiend just because she's given unlimited credit and free drinks?

If you like seedy corruption films in an exotic setting, like Barbary Coast, you can give this one a shot. You're going to have to read between the lines, though, but it shouldn't be that hard to do, since the implications are there.

THE SHANGHAI GESTURE displays what was best and worst in Josef von Sternberg's 'German Expressionist' approach to film making, first seen by American audiences in his classic Marlene Dietrich productions of the 1930s. Each setting is decadent and mysterious, shot in soft focus, and wreathed in smoke; a sense of the absurd manifests itself in make-up, hairstyles, and costume; each character postures, incessantly, striking poses before delivering dialog; and there is always an undercurrent of sexual bondage, here manifested in the casual suggestions made by lazy, yet smoldering 'Dr. Omar' (Victor Mature), to the stranded showgirl, 'Dixie' (Phyllis Brooks), and the initially haughty, if naive 'Poppy/Victoria' (Gene Tierney), both of whom he easily 'bends' to his desires. In von Sternberg's world, there are seldom heroes, only survivors and predators.

Set in a fantasy version of the infamous Chinese port, GESTURE gathers a disparate group of international 'types', and sets them down in the multileveled center of inequity, a gambling parlor run by the legendary Chinese 'Mother' Gin Sling (Ona Munson). Ensnared by their debts, the mysterious woman 'owns' them, possessing an extraordinary degree of power.

Then the equally mysterious and powerful Sir Guy Charteris (Walter Huston) arrives in Shanghai, strong enough to control the local government, and with a goal of evicting 'Mother' Gin Sling, and tearing down her property. There is a shared 'skeleton' in both their closets, however, which she will reveal in the film's climactic 'Chinese New Year' dinner party...

While Munson could never 'pass' as Chinese, she does appear exotic and inscrutable, and is actually quite good, as is Huston, displaying a sensitivity masked in arrogant smugness. The true joy of the film, however, is watching the film's younger stars, early in their careers. Victor Mature, at 26, a year after his 'breakthrough' role in ONE MILLION B.C., poses more than acts in his role of an Arab gigolo, but clearly displays the sexuality that would make him a major heartthrob in the 40s; and Gene Tierney, not yet 21, occasionally overplays the 'fall' of her character, yet possesses the luminous beauty that would become her trademark.

Josef von Sternberg would only direct a handful of films after THE SHANGHAI GESTURE (receiving 'on screen' credit in even fewer), and this would be the last film he would have any kind of creative control over.

Faults and all, that alone would make THE SHANGHAI GESTURE worth viewing!