Sorry, this movie sucks

Absolutely the worst movie.

The acting in this movie is really good.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

The movie takes place in shady, but lavishing casino in Shanghai - the city where all sorts of people with usually shady past are together. The visual style of the movie is wonderful - one of the most grand casinos ever shown on the silver screen. The story is interesting and thrilling, although heavy handed and overly melodramatic, but it isn't distracting. It rather adds more othreworldly feel to already fairy tale like casino atmosphere with quirky characters. The film is outdated by the sense that Chinese people are played by the caucasians, but I still can't see anyone else playing Mother Gin Sling than magnificent Ona Munson. Gene Tierney is always eyecandy as lady in trouble. And Victor Mature - an actor who is always interesting to watch being disinterested and bored.Far from being von Sternberg's best, but it is a wonderful film noir exercise, and as it is little different than other well known film noir's 'The Shanghai Gesture' is highly reccomended to the aficionados of the genre.

Sometimes I just put my reasoned critic to bed and grab my DVD of Shanghai Gesture for an evening of irrational delight. This extravagant, unhinged, twisted and sometimes terrible film is my Guilty Pleasure, a confession I honor by giving it a higher rating than it probably deserves. When this bizarre film was made, Hollywood, still under the yoke of a stringent production code, could not tackle many taboo subjects and thus director Josef Von Sternberg could only hint at them. The brothel, for instance, where the original Broadway play was set, becomes a gambling den (although girls in bamboo cages are dangled outside!) Any hints of drug use were forbidden, so Gene Tierney's opium-addled, spoiled monster of a daughter is named "Poppy" (as in Opium), and the owner of the casino, formerly Mother "G-D" is now called Mother Gin Sling...and so on. Most of America was flocking to see Mickey Rooney in The Hardy Family series, a happy product from MGM. Shanghai Gesture is hardly mainstream.This strange film was not made at a major studio, but produced by Arnold Pressburger, who did manage to sign an amazing assemblage of major character actors to enact a plot of ultimate revenge. There's Victor Mature, hiding in his capacious burnoose, sleazy in a fez, playing Dr. Omar, seducer of the innocent, or Ona Munson, remembered by some viewers as good-hearted bordello gal Belle Watling in Gone With The Wind, sporting a series of Hollywood's most outrageous wigs. And there's Walter Huston with a gimpy arm, and even acting instructor Maria Ouspenskaya, wordless as "The Amah."The sets alone are worth the viewing, from the initial shot of Madame Gin Sling's gambling den, a Deco vortex of gambling activity sucking you into an absurd plot loaded with illogical coincidence. This frenzied Asian Fantasy, which has little to do with reality, and everything to do with Out-Of-Control Style can be great fun and is sometimes admirable for the right reasons. "You likee Chinee New Year?" says Mike Mazurki, usually seen in films as a two-bit gangster, here a shirtless bouncer who has seldom been better! One caveat: Criterion needs to get their hands on this one and turn out a decent print--the DVD quality is, at best, mediocre! But I want my Shanghai Gesture anyway!

Josef von Sternberg ( in truth just plain Joe Sternberg, which speaks volumes about the man) was a director who went for style over substance in all of his movies. In this case it's all style and barely any substance. You're expected to be so engrossed with all the exotic characters he has assembled and the sheer decadence of an oriental gambling den to overlook the fact that there is hardly any storyline to hang on to. The only direction he seems to have given to his actors is "Look outlandish and say your lines as if they were pure poetry". Victor Mature just hangs around the casino looking handsome, as does Gene Tierney, never a great actress but in this case it's not entirely her fault. Some witty dialog could have helped, but the script is downright dull and predictable. The camera-work is indifferent and consists mostly of sweeping shots of gambling tables and people sitting at the bar. What there is of story and intrigue is packed into the last ten minutes of the movie but by that time no revelation however shocking could have turned this into even a halfway decent movie. A visit to your local Chinese takeaway is a true exotic adventure compared to this half-baked chop suey of a movie.

"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.