The Shanghai Gesture (1941)

Sick Product of a Sick System

Don't listen to the negative reviews

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

Dreadful film best summarizes this 1941 movie.Businessman Walter Huston buys up land and wants to evict gambling house owner Ona Munson. Was Ms. Munson always cast as the gambling house dame? Remember her as Belle Watling, owner of the brothel and gambling in the memorable "Gone With the Wind?" By the way, what did Munson have on top of her head, a bird cage? Just like the rest of the film, it is absolutely ridiculous.Gin-sling, or whatever her name is, recognizes Huston and in a memorable Chinese New Year celebration reveals herself to him. Gene Tierney did some pretty good acting here. In a way, she reminded me of her part in 1946's "The Razor Edge," but the latter film was so far superior to this junk.The film seems to drag at the tables. You know the voice of the Frenchman who calls the numbers-Vingt-neuf rouge (29-red, etc.)

Victoria (Gene Tierney) is be-friended by Dr Omar (Victor Mature) and lured into hanging out at a Shanghai casino owned by 'Mother' Gin Sling (Ona Munson). Victoria mounts up some gambling debts and takes a shine to the booze that's on offer as she descends from posh girl to vice addict. Drugs and prostitution are also definitely on the menu although we are not shown this. We can certainly assume that this path has been taken by Dixie (Phyllis Brooks), another of Dr Omar's recent recruits. Victoria's father, Sir Guy (Walter Huston), is in town to close down 'Mother' Gin Sling's establishment and to meet with his daughter, although he does not realize that she is part of the scene which he wants to close down. 'Mother' Gin Sling holds a dinner party on the Chinese New Year where she confronts Sir Guy with a few truths......she also gets a surprise.......The acting is good in this film, apart from Gene Tierney. Victor Mature is smooth in a letchy way - he is almost dripping in oiliness. The best performances come from Walter Huston and Ona Munson and their scenes together are very dramatically charged. Phyliss Brooks is good as a tart who falls in with the underworld crowd but I'm afraid to say that depsite headlining this film, Gene Tierney is the worst of the 3 female leads. She is not bad at portraying a spoilt, rich girl but she is dreadful when called upon to do any actual acting. Her whining scene outside Mature's room is agonizingly annoying, her crying scene is shameful and her transformation to wild girl is unconvincing.The dialogue is amusing at times with 'Mother' Gin Sling's benefactor Montgomery Hower (Clyde Fillmore) delivering the funniest lines, eg, "...someone has pinched you.....I hope..." at the dinner party, whilst 'Mother' Gin Sling and Sir Guy deliver the more dramatic prose. The story unravels itself quite quickly from the dinner party scene and it can be difficult to follow so pay attention or you will be asking yourself questions at the end. I also found the ending ambiguous and the interpretation I favoured was that things remain as normal. However, this is probably not what happens.The sets are good and visually striking and the final words must go to Ona Munson. Not only was she mesmerizing as the Shanghai underground leader - she steals every scene that she is in - but her head-dress is something else. She is a cartoon-like character of evil with wicked witches and stepmothers and the Medusa all rolled into one. Very striking. Is she that bad a person, though?

"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.

Josef von Sternberg's crazy film stars Gene Tierney as a good girl who goes woefully bad while visiting Shanghai. At the local casino she runs into the likes of "doctor" Victor Mature, showgirl Phyllis Brooks (as Dixie Pomeroy) as well as the dragon lady proprietor Ona Munson (as Mother Gin Sling!). The film is fun but way too outrageous for its own good. Munson is unforgettable though dangerously close to being upstaged by her outlandish hairdos. Mature is awful wearing a fez and claiming to be born in Damascus. Tierney, just 21 at the time, gives a wildly uneven performance...at first a fairly convincing femme fatale and then later a very whiny ingénue. By the time Tierney's seemingly respectable father Walter Huston shows up, von Sternberg throws the film into melodramatic overdrive. You have to see the last 1/2 hour to believe it. The production values are stunning, including brilliant art direction by Boris Leven and great cinematography by Paul Ivano.