As usual, we watched this because it was on the Criterion Channel. They've added a collection of Dietrich/Von Sternberg collaborations, and this looked the most interesting (partly because it had Anna May Wong in it as well), and it certainly was. As Jami commented, it feels a lot like an Agatha Christie, because it has a slew of colorful characters forced into companionship on a train from "Peiping" (Beijing) to Shanghai during the Chinese Civil War. There's "Shanghai Lily" (Dietrich)
who is a famous "coaster," according to a soldier at the beginning, which means a woman who goes up and down the coast essentially acquiring and dumping sugar daddies. There's Hui Fei (Wong),
also a woman of ill repute, albeit an actual local. Alongside stoic English Army Doctor Captain Donald Harvey, there's the mysterious Henry Chang (Warner "Charlie Chan" Oland), who, as fat croaky-voiced American Sam Salt (Eugene Pallette, who seems to be in just about every film of this period, most famously as Friar Tuck in Robin Hood) seems both white and Chinese (and claims to have one parent each), priggish Reverend Mr. Carmichael, fussy Northern English Shanghai Boarding House owner Mrs. Haggerty (who is the first person we see, buying a ticket for the train,
and who tries to smuggle her little dog aboard, only to have him taken away and stowed in the baggage compartment), non-speaking Frenchman Major Lenard (who keeps trying to converse with Salt, who is convinced that the perfectly innocent French he hears is a stream of insults - plus ca change), and whiny German hypochondriac Herr Baum. All of them have secrets of varying degrees of importance (Major Lenard was drummed out of the military in disgrace, but insists on wearing his uniform on his trip to visit his sister because he doesn't want her to know, Baum is a huge opium smuggler), most importantly, as it transpires, Mr. Chang. As the train gets going (delayed slightly by a cow on the tracks) we quickly discover that Donald and Lily were lovers five years earlier, but he left her because he thought she'd been unfaithful, and has been pining for her ever since. But she only meant to test him, and has also loved him the whole time she's been "coasting". But we don't get very far before the train is stopped by the Government armed forces and everyone's papers are checked, before they haul off a Chinese man and the passengers are herded back on board. Mr. Chang, however, takes a detour to the telegraph office, and we soon find that he has sent orders ahead to have the train stopped and taken over, for it transpires he is a major rebel leader. He then sets up office in a hall in the village the train is stopped in and examines each passenger in turn to find out if they can be ransomed in return for the man who was taken by the Government forces, who was his vital right hand man. (This is where the secrets come out.) He settles on Donald, because he's on his way to operate on a major government bigwig in Shanghai, who will be paralyzed without his help. He also decides he'd like Lily for himself,
but Donald decks him and Lily is allowed to go. (However, to her great shame Hui Fei is taken in her place and suffers a fate worse than death.) Back on the (immobile) train with all the other passengers, Lily is crazed with worry, but (oddly) takes the advice of the (suddenly not such a huge prick as he had been) reverend and prays for Donald. Anyway, Chang's scheme works, and another train brings back Chang's right hand man,
along with a British Army officer to take charge of the Shanghai Express. But wait, the Rebel leader is handed over, but where is Donald? Lily goes to investigate and Chang tells her that the only stipulation was that he be returned alive, but it didn't say that he should still have his sight, and he must be punished for striking him. Desperate, Lily agrees to go with Chang after all if he'll let Donald go. It's a deal! And when Donald spots Lily's luggage being taken off the train and goes back to investigate, she tells him she's going willingly and he is about to storm off in a huff when Hui Fei returns for revenge on her molester... Back on the train, Donald is still convinced that Lily had ditched him for Chang (what a maroon), until the (suddenly a pillar of empathy and human kindness) reverend, who has winkled out of Lily what she really did, tells him he's an ass and starts the thaw.
So, not exactly an Agatha Christie plot (no mystery), but an exciting little number nonetheless. But the real strength of the film is the sumptuous visuals. Von Sternberg had clearly made it his mission to turn Dietrich into a screen icon and lights every frame like a Renaissance painting, with inky blacks and stark whites. You could make a poster out of practically every frame that she's in.
And then there are the sets, both outside and inside the train. It really looks like China, with dozens of obviously real Chinese extras crowding every frame, and the train chugging slowly along tracks with high houses on either sides. (There's an amazing shot of soldiers sitting on top of the train who use their bayonets to steal food from baskets in the market they pass by). Meanwhile, inside the train it makes you long to be able to take a ride on it -
until it gets stopped by heavily armed men, that is. This film cries out to be seen on a big screen. Dietrich herself isn't what you'd call a great actress, but she's certainly a commanding presence. Her romantic counterpart, Clive Brook, has a wonderfully silky delivery, but is also a bit stiff, and they just don't make a plausible couple. Also the reverend, as mentioned, undergoes a remarkable change about halfway through. (He was awful up to that point - refusing even to sit in the same carriage as Hui Fei because he "knew what kind of woman she was".) Apparently (according to IMDb) they were forced to make the reverend's character less odious for fear of offending the godly. (I also don't buy Lily's praying, although Jami is less skeptical.) But Oland makes a menacing baddie (quite unlike Charlie Chan - and because he's supposedly mixed race, it's not so insulting that he's actually white), and Anna May Wong does a lot with a little, and Sam Salt and Mrs. Haggerty are diverting comic relief. Check it out!
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