Although The Shanghai Gesture was nominated for two Oscars for music scoring and for art&set design, the film is a rather creaky old fashioned melodrama. Based on a Broadway play it is directed by Joseph Von Sternberg who could never recapture what he and Marlene Dietrich did for China setting story like Shanghai Express.We're not on a train in this one, this is a story concerning Shanghai which was an international port in every sense of the word with about fifteen western powers and Japan having a piece of turf that their country's laws governed, not China's. In the western quarter, British section is Madame Gin Sling's popular nightclub and casino, but industrialist Walter Huston has plans for some urban renewal and Gin Sling's club is slated for demolition.Madame Gin Sling is played by Ona Munson who is the best in the film. In Gone With The Wind she played Belle Watling who had a similar establishment in Atlanta. But Gin Sling is lots different than Belle Watling. And she recognizes Walter Huston as her long lost former husband who abandoned her years ago. She's got special plans for him that involve his daughter Gene Tierney who is a spoiled brat of a girl.All I can say is this one really goes over the top. The Shanghai Gesture is a play not likely to revived any time soon. The cast does what they can with it, but it's way too melodramatic for current taste.

Despite the thousands of movies I HAVE seen there are still a respectable number that for one reason or another eluded me. Shanghai Gesture was one of them until I came across a bargain basement DVD. I've just been looking at the first page of reviews and one is a rave by a French friend of mine that I am unable to share much as I respect his opinion. The impressions came hurtling toward me at breakneck speed; the 'cluttered' set in the opening shot, a Von Sternberg trademark, the ridiculously eclectic cast barely two of which belong in the same movie. What Eric Blore is doing there at all, for example, is anybody's guess, playing his usual 'silly ass' distributing his 'slow burns' randomly and handicapped for no good reason. Ona Munson is so like Marlene Dietrich one wonders why they didn't just get the real thing and have done with it. Mike Mazurki as a coolie? You've got to be kidding. It just goes on, Gene Tierney, playing against type - or at least trying to do 'bad', Marcel Dalio rehearsing his croupier role in the next year's Casablanca. And the Plot! Talk about melodrama. Enough already.

"The Shanghai Gesture" (1941), an early audition to the film noir genre (made in the same year as "The Maltese Falcon") and directed by the great Josef von Sternberg, based on the play of the same name by John Colton and starring the luminous Gene Tierney, Walter Huston and Victor Mature.The plot follows Mother Gin Sling's (Ona Munson) casino in Shanghai and the various exploits of the people in it, like Poppy Smith (Tierney) and her infatuation with the Arab Doctor Omar (Mature) and Gin Sling trying to stop the Shanghai authorities from shutting down the place.This has obviously been heavily cut (the title is never properly explained) by the censors over at the Hays office and that is hardly surprising: in the original play, the gambling house was a brothel, Gene Tierney's character was addicted to drugs (only her name gives any indication of that), and the Mother Gin Sling was called Mother Goddam. Several parts of the film simply just do not make coherent sense and von Sternberg, as has been noted by film critic Tony Rayns, seems to be more interested in the luxurious set of the casino and trying to make Tierney look as beautiful as possible with the aid of his marvellous cinematographer Paul Ivano anyway rather than tell a exciting good story. The actors, under the circumstances perform remarkably well: Victor Mature playing an Arab is as preposterous as John Wayne as Genghis Kahn, but it works, unbelievably though it may seem and gives the best performance of the motion picture. The young Gene Tierney, while not at the height of her acting prowess yet, is still vivid and Walter Huston, likewise not in his finest surrounds gives a solid piece of acting and a host of well know faces pop up through at the movie: Maria Ouspenskaya, Eric Blore and Mike Mazurki all make appearances. An over blown delight like "Duel in the Sun" (1946, which von Sternberg also had an un-credited hand in) that is so fun despite or because of its flaws; it is truly one of a kind.

Josef von Sternberg's crazy film stars Gene Tierney as a good girl who goes woefully bad while visiting Shanghai. At the local casino she runs into the likes of "doctor" Victor Mature, showgirl Phyllis Brooks (as Dixie Pomeroy) as well as the dragon lady proprietor Ona Munson (as Mother Gin Sling!). The film is fun but way too outrageous for its own good. Munson is unforgettable though dangerously close to being upstaged by her outlandish hairdos. Mature is awful wearing a fez and claiming to be born in Damascus. Tierney, just 21 at the time, gives a wildly uneven performance...at first a fairly convincing femme fatale and then later a very whiny ingénue. By the time Tierney's seemingly respectable father Walter Huston shows up, von Sternberg throws the film into melodramatic overdrive. You have to see the last 1/2 hour to believe it. The production values are stunning, including brilliant art direction by Boris Leven and great cinematography by Paul Ivano.