Cinema
Shanghai Express
Josef von Sternberg · 1932
Synopsis
China, 1931, in the midst of civil war. The express from Peking to Shanghai carries Shanghai Lily, an adventuress known along the whole coast, and Captain Harvey, a British army surgeon whom she loved five years earlier and who is travelling to operate on an important figure in Shanghai. Also aboard are Hui Fei, a Chinese courtesan, a reverend who takes them for fallen women, an American gambler, an opium dealer, a boarding-house keeper, a French officer and Chang, a mysterious man of mixed race. On the way, rebel soldiers stop the train and hold the passengers.
Context
The film earned its director his second and last Academy Award nomination for directing, and earned Lee Garmes the award for cinematography. The Chinese Nationalist government banned it and demanded its withdrawal; the ban was lifted, through the offices of the United States embassy, only after the studio undertook not to treat this subject again. Anna May Wong, born in Los Angeles, plays her most famous role in it; the laws against miscegenation, which forbade showing a mixed couple, then closed the lead roles to her.
Who it is for
A film of about eighty minutes, in English; the discs sold in France offer it subtitled, without dubbing.
Prizes and reception
Nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture, and the greatest commercial success of the films Sternberg made with Dietrich.
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