Shanghai Gesture

Starring:Gene Tierney, Walter Huston, Victor Mature, Ona Munson, Phyllis Brooks, Albert Bassermann, Maria Ouspenskaya, Eric Blore, Ivan Lebedeff, Mike Mazurki, Clyde Fillmore, Grayce Hampton, Rex Evans, Mikhail Rasumny, Michael Dalmatoff, Marcel Dalio, John Abbott, Roland Lui, Moy Ming, Brooks Benedict
Director: Josef von Sternberg
Studio: Image Entertainment
Product Type: DVD

Editorial Review:
Amazon.com
Josef von Sternberg's The Shanghai Gesture is one of the most perverse portraits of decadence to squeak past Hollywood censors. Set in a Shanghai of crowded, claustrophobic, and gloriously phony street sets, Sternberg tells the tale of the criminals and aristocrats who inhabit "Mother Gin Sling's," a gambling house of seedy opulence where the bored rich and desperate poor congregate to lose their money and possibly their souls. Into this world wanders the thrill-seeking Poppy (the elegant Gene Tierney), a haughty girl infatuated with the club's sleepy-eyed gigolo-poet, Omar (Victor Mature, at his lazy best). "We buy and sell everything in the most honorable manner," he purrs to Poppy while luring her further into debt. When Gin Sling (Ona Munson) discovers the girl's secret, she uses her as part of an elaborate revenge against millionaire Sir Guy Charteris (Walter Huston), a Shanghai businessman with his own dark secrets. Though this came out a year before Casablanca, it plays like a twisted, fun-house mirror reflection of that film, a corrupt paradise in world of meaningless bustle, empty gestures, and easy virtue. Sternberg's languid pacing gives the film a stuck-out-of-time quality, with a story that slows and eddies while the film lingers on the sleazy decadence (suggested, rather than shown, in sly, subversive flourishes.)

Amazon.com

Josef von Sternberg's The Shanghai Gesture is one of the most perverse portraits of decadence to squeak past Hollywood censors. Set in a Shanghai of crowded, claustrophobic, and gloriously phony street sets, Sternberg tells the tale of the criminals and aristocrats who inhabit "Mother Gin Sling's," a gambling house of seedy opulence where the bored rich and desperate poor congregate to lose their money and possibly their souls. Into this world wanders the thrill-seeking Poppy (the elegant Gene Tierney), a haughty girl infatuated with the club's sleepy-eyed gigolo-poet, Omar (Victor Mature, at his lazy best). "We buy and sell everything in the most honorable manner," he purrs to Poppy while luring her further into debt. When Gin Sling (Ona Munson) discovers the girl's secret, she uses her as part of an elaborate revenge against millionaire Sir Guy Charteris (Walter Huston), a Shanghai businessman with his own dark secrets. Though this came out a year before Casablanca, it plays like a twisted, fun-house mirror reflection of that film, a corrupt paradise in world of meaningless bustle, empty gestures, and easy virtue. Sternberg's languid pacing gives the film a stuck-out-of-time quality, with a story that slows and eddies while the film lingers on the sleazy decadence (suggested, rather than shown, in sly, subversive flourishes.)

Description

A young woman, Poppy, out for excitement in Shanghai, enters a gambling house owned by "Mother" Gin Sling, a dragon-lady who worked herself up from poverty to buy the casino. Sir Guy Charteris, wealthy entrepreneur, has purchased a large area of Shanghai, forcing Gin Sling to vacate by the coming Chinese New Year. Under orders from Gin Sling, who has found out Poppy is Charteris' daughter, the smarmy Doctor Omar leads Poppy deeper and deeper into an addiction to gambling and alcohol. Gin Sling, realizing that Charteris was her long-ago husband who she thinks abandoned her, plans her revenge by inviting Charteris to a Chinese New Year dinner party to expose his past indiscretions. Charteris, however, has a suprise of his own to spring on Gin Sling.

Customer Reviews:

Gene est si touchante.......2007-04-02

Gene Tierney, actrice magnifique, hante ce film comme tous ceux dans lesquels elle a joué.

YOU DO NOT NEED TO SHOW SEX, TO SHOCK.......2006-08-05

This movie has been written about so often and so well, and in such detail, there is no need to re-hash all that here. The play from which it is taken is deadly dull and pretensious. It amazes me von Sternberg was able to transform it into stimulating adult entertainment.

Nevertheless, from my point of view, the movie ends as a demonstration of the betrayal and infamy and moral depravity of Anglo-colonials, not only in the Orient -- and not only Englishmen either -- but all over the world. At the time the movie was made, the notion of such a thing was absolutely scandalous, and that's why the show was hidden by clouds of hippocritical critic-babel, and touted as a kind of von Sternberg freak show of Asiatic, drug-soaked depravity. The Japanese hadn't thrown the English out of Asia yet, and English-speakers and readers lived pretty much in a land described by W. Somorset Maugham. Colonialism was far from dead, even in the cosmopolitan metropolis Shanghai; the first and greatest Open Trading City, where anything you could think of and pay for was available. It's interesting to recollect that Wallace Simpson, who married the King of England and became the Dutchess of Windsor, served her sexual apprenticeship in a Shanghai social club for batchelors, perhaps not too unlike this one of Madame Gin Sling's.

And, it is curious, particularly, that von Sternberg chose to introduce a theme of homoeroticism through the very big, dark handsome and masculine, Victor Mature. In a burnoose and fez and with smoldering sensuality in every un-blinking black-eyed look, he is/was a challenge to every "straight" man. Today's equivalent would be a muscle-bound actor naked, or in a thong. Interestingly enough, at about the same time, in THE MALTESE FALCON, the director does much he same thing, in the same way, with the introduction of a character called Joel Cairo, played by, of all people, Peter Lorre. In that film, the forbidden sin was of Syrian origin, had curly hair, wore a tux, smelled of Chypre and got bitch-slapped by Mary Astor. What is so remarkable is that the existence of Gay men as sexually secure and formidable, integral figures in a modern story, was a very dangerous thing to propose, let alone to show.

How far we have come in only about half a century. In SHANGHAI GESTURE, all the so-called vices are on parade, as characters and types in a gambling den (with rooms upstairs.) It's like an automated wax-works of Protestant sin. But, looking at those characters today, and that situation now in the age of legalized gambling -- and the rebirth of Shanghai -- we see nothing or nearly nothing out of the ordinary. Except, of course, the astonishing beauty of the very young Jean Tierny who, under von Sternberg's lens, writhes and pouts like a little kitten being teased just as she enters her first heat.

Where's the zero-star rating?.......2006-07-01

In my ongoing meander through the world of noir (and noir-ish) I thought I'd give this a chance. Yes, Gene Tierney is beautiful. End of story.
This story was watered down, so it goes, to get around the Hollywood censors - and nothing is left. There's not a character to care about (except maybe Dixie). Victor Mature is SO bad, it's amazing he had a career at all.

the real shanghai gesture.......2006-02-24

this film was originally a play written in the mid 1920's by john colton. there are only three copies of the play in circulation, of which i own two. the watered down version of this play is what you see in this film. by the 1940's standards, this film is outrageous, but by todays standards it is rather tame. from my information, there were over one hundred versions of the film script that were submitted to the censors.
the original name of one of the leading characters was NOT madame gin sling but "mother god damn". the original setting for the piece was a brothel, not a gambling den.
the original shanghai gesture, according to john colton was thus, extend the hand to its extreme and place the tip of one's thumb to the edge of one's nose with the pinky facing outwards. this is never mentioned in the film.
kind of loses the point, doesn't it?
but this film, despite its shortcomings is most worthwhile.

Depravity in an Exotic Locale. .......2005-04-04

"The Shanghai Gesture" is often regarded as an early film noir. I'm not sure I'd go so far as to call it noir. Maybe proto-noir. It embodies some noir conventions and defies others. "The Shanghai Gesture" is a dark story of revenge and greed among seedy underworld characters. But the underworld is in Shanghai, not in the urban jungle of World War II-era America. The story takes place when Shanghai was an international city, part of the British Empire, "a refuge for people who wished to live between the lines of laws and customs", as we're told in the introduction to the film.

The film's first scene shows us a street in Shanghai populated by colorful characters from every corner of the globe. Then we enter "Mother Gin Sling's Casino", an opulent gambling house where Asian, European, Indian, American, and Arab patrons come to be entertained and where no one likes to talk about his nationality. Most of the film takes place in this exotic casino where shootings are commonplace and no law exists except for that of the proprietor, Mother Gin Sling (Ona Munson). One evening, Mother Gin Sling is informed that she must close her establishment and move to another part of town. This district of the city has been purchased by a conglomerate that intends to renovate it. Not too concerned about the problem, Mother Gin sets about finding a way to bribe or threaten the new owner, Sir Guy Charteris (Walter Huston) into letting her stay. That same evening a beautiful young woman calling herself Poppy Smith (Gene Tierney) visits the casino. A pampered and overprotected rich girl straight from finishing school, Poppy is looking for adventure and danger in the "wicked city". With the encouragement of Doctor Omar (Victor Mature), a slick, poetic ladies' man who works for Mother Gin Sling, she finds too much of it. But everything that goes on in Mother Gin Sling's casino is to her purposes, which will be revealed at a dinner party on the Chinese New Year, attended by Sir Guy and Shanghai's powerful people.

"The Shanghai Gesture" was originally a play by John Colton, and sometimes it feels stagy. Written for Broadway in 1925, the story tries to bring together all manner of vice in an irresistibly exotic location, which is nothing if not entertaining. The most enjoyable performance in the film is probably that of Phyllis Brooks as tough chorus girl Dixie Pomeroy, who has landed in Shanghai and has to make the best of it. She's got spunk and most of the film's best lines, although she's a minor character. Gene Tierney is generally convincing as a spoiled rich girl who is transformed into a raving junkie. And she radiates star power. Ona Munson is always upstaged by her outrageous coiffure.

"The Shanghai Gesture" hasn't fared well with critics, but it was never intended to be great writing. This is salacious popular entertainment, the stuff of pulp fiction. We have a pretty young woman in an exotic environment who jettisons all propriety and succumbs to a lifestyle of debauchery. In a grand style. And to her own ruin, of course. Shanghai? International intrigue? Gene Tierney? I can't help but be entertained, even if the film is a bit ridiculous.

The DVD (Image Entertainment disc): This isn't a pristine print of the film. It has some white specks, although not enough to be distracting. The sound needs to be cleaned up, but the only major problems are during the dinner sequence. It's very watchable, but it needs some work. The only bonus features are text filmographies for director Josef von Sternberg and four members of the cast.

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