Main Cast: Gene Tierney, Victor Mature, Ona Munson, Walter Huston, Phyllis Brooks
Release Year: 1941
Country: US
Run Time: 97 minutes
Plot
Josef von Sternberg made his first return to exotic Shanghai since 1932's Shanghai Express in this baroque conflagration, based on a 1925 play by John Colton that required 30 revisions before it was sufficiently sanitized to pass muster with Hays Office censors. The film takes place in the gambling den of Mother Gin Sling (Ona Munson), who finds her casino threatened with closing by stuffed shirt English financier Sir Guy Charteris (Walter Huston). Gin Sling knows that the key to keeping her casino open is to dig up some dirt on Sir Guy, and it's quick in coming. She finds that Sir Guy was compelled to leave China in a hurry some time in the past, stealing his wife's money and plotting to kill her. Sir Guy ended up abandoning his wife in China and leaving her with an infant daughter. She also finds out that Sir Guy's grown-up daughter, Poppy (Gene Tierney, is a frequent and deeply indebted guest of Gin Sling's casino. Gin Sling is now ready to blackmail Sir Guy into keeping her casino open. He tracks down his daughter and tries to convince her to leave town. But Poppy refuses to budge, having fallen in love with Doctor Omar (Victor Mature). ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide
Review
Although not much liked in its day, Joseph Von Sternberg's final great film is a "must" for anyone sharing the director's appetite for the sensually exotic. It doesn't really make much difference at this late date that most of playwright John Colton's then highly censurable characters have been severely watered down; that Colton's brothel owner, Madam Goddam, has become a gambling establishment proprietor named Madam Gin Slin (Ona Munson); that a torrid and adulterous love affair is turned into a broken marriage; or that the heroine's drug dependency instead becomes an addiction to gambling. The Shanghai Gesture, in fact, is much less Colton that it is Von Sternberg: here is the moody mise-en-scene, the fluid camera work and the erotic obsession. And, to his eternal credit, the director even manages to obtain sterling performances from such studio manufactured personalities as Gene Tierney and Victor Mature. As for Ona Munson, the erstwhile Belle Watling of Gone With the Wind is all caked makeup and desperation and not entirely the whore with a heart of gold that may have been intended. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide
Boris Leven - Art Director, Oleg Cassini - Costume Designer, Royer - Costume Designer, Charles Kerr - First Assistant Director, Arnold Pressburger - First Assistant Director, Josef von Sternberg - Director, S.K. Winston - Editor, Richard Hageman - Composer (Music Score), Paul Ivano - Cinematographer, Arnold Pressburger - Producer, Howard Bristol - Set Designer, Jules Furthman - Screenwriter, Josef von Sternberg - Screenwriter, Geza Herczeg - Screenwriter, Karl Vollmoeller - Screenwriter, John Colton - Play Author
Shanghai Gesture, The (1926), a melodrama by John Colton. [Martin Beck Theatre, 331 perf.] At the “Far‐Famed House of Mother Goddam,” a Shanghai brothel, the proprietress entertains the head of the British‐China Trading Company, Sir Guy Charteris (McKay Morris). Mother Goddam (Florence Reed) reminds Sir Guy of several things he has forgotten: that they were once lovers, that he had promised to marry her, and that he had sold her to some cruel Chinese junkmen when he fell in love with an English girl. As Sir Guy and his friends look on, Mother Goddam now sells a young girl to similar junkmen, then reveals that the girl was a daughter she had had by Guy. When the daughter, Poppy (Mary Duncan), returns to the brothel as a dope addict and a prostitute, Mother Goddam strangles her. Originally written as a vehicle for Mrs. Fiske, who was dismissed by director Guthrie McClintic during the tryout, the play was lambasted by many critics. George Jean Nathan called it “a pâté of box‐office drivel.” But its lurid story and Reed's memorable performance made it a major hit.
This early noirdrama explores the decadent lives and secret pasts of all the main characters, following many stories in an almost-surreal gambling house owned by "Mother" Gin Sling.
A young woman, Victoria Charteris, also known as Poppy Smith (Tierney), is out for some excitement in Shanghai, and enters Gin Sling's establishment.
Gene Tierney in The Shanghai Gesture
Dragon-lady Gin Sling (Munson) worked herself up from poverty to buy the casino, only to now see it in danger of being taken over by Sir Guy Charteris (Huston), a wealthy entrepreneur who has purchased a large area of Shanghai, and is forcing Gin Sling to vacate by the coming Chinese New Year.
Under orders from Gin Sling, who has found out Poppy is Charteris's daughter, a fez-wearing Doctor Omar (Mature) 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 surprise of his own to spring on Gin Sling.
Quotes
Poppy Smith: "You said Doctor Omar. Doctor of what?"
Doctor Omar: "Doctor of nothing, Miss Smith. It sounds important and hurts no one. Unlike most doctors."
