Shanghaï Express

Revisiting a gem of worldwide cinema, Shanghai Express !

What could be more enthralling than restoring a dazzling visual masterpiece, then inviting the audience to discover the film, and much more!

HISTORY

The film is set in 1931 during the Chinese Civil War. A train connecting Beijing and Shanghai carries aboard a spinster and her dog, scores of shady and menacing characters, a Frenchman, a clergyman tasked with “upholding public morals” (and acting as a buffer against censorship for the producers in this pre-Hays Code-era flick), a Chinese prostitute and the main characters, two lovers who run into each other by chance… after parting on bad terms! The man is an English officer, the woman is the notorious Shanghai Lily, “a woman who lives by her wits along the shoreline.” Otherwise known as “a coaster” she sells her charms up and down the Chinese coast. “It took more than one man to change my name to Shanghai Lily,” she exclaims. The officer has not actively sought to replace her, not wanting to “suffer again.” Shanghai Lily, on her side,  finds him rather selfish and self-centered! Thus, it will take plenty of high-drama twists and turns and a highly female-driven sense of sacrifice to bring down the villains and deliver the lovers safely to their destination.

The main premise of Shanghai Express recalls Maupassant’s Boule de Suif, which filmmaker Josef von Sternberg always denied. The director claimed that the impetus came about while reading Henry Harvey’s Sky Over China, the account of a real-life situation featuring Chinese and Westerners held hostage, that had occurred in China less than a decade earlier.

THE CAST

The aura of the actors far outweighs the historical context. Von Sternberg reunites with the actress with whom he will make seven films: Marlene Dietrich. “With her deep, melancholic gaze, her eyelashes three centimeters long, the soft halo of her hair, her classical features, her mystical air and her panther-like body–she couldn’t have entered a church without immediately disrupting the sermon,” the filmmaker summarizes. Playing opposite her is ever-nonchalant yet serious Englishman Clive Brook. His face is as refined as Dietrich’s, with thin, artificially drawn eyebrows. It takes someone with Brook’s high-caliber composure to co-star with Dietrich. The latter’s daughter, Maria Riva, described her mother’s role as “the most exquisite black bird one could imagine,” adding, “In my opinion, nothing will ever surpass the rooster-feather costume she wears in Shanghai Express.”

A TOUCH OF GENIUS

Shanghai Express is the result of an extraordinary collaboration that culminated in pure beauty; a collective effort between cinematographer Lee Garmes (who won an Academy Award for the film), costume designer Travis Banton, Marlene Dietrich and Josef von Sternberg. The director shot the entire film in Los Angeles studios, and it depicts a fantastical China with stunning sets that serve as the backdrop for the German actress’s feline movements, especially of her hands. The highly contrasting lighting–from the slinky, inky black of the satin in Dietrich’s dark garments to the brilliantly dazzling, delicate sparkle, particularly of the jewelry (ah, that shot of the actress’s ring-adorned hands clasped in prayer!)–immerses the viewer in a glow, a nightclub-like haze that is sexy, elegant and daring. The actress’s skin, revealed through a negligee made of down feathers in the iconic scene where her character is finally completely at ease in a languid, weary pose, is so unforgettable that it was chosen as the poster for the 45^th Cannes Film Festival. “The biggest commercial success of the Dietrich-Sternberg alliance. A fantastical portrayal of China, but the pinnacle of the Marlene myth, whose ensembles are breathtaking,” concluded Jean Tulard.

TODAY

Shanghai Lily inspired the Snow Queen incarnated by Marion Cotillard in Lucile Hadžihalilović’s The Ice Tower (2025)… We’ll take an enticing feminist approach to Shanghai Express with this untamable heroine, supported by the unspoken friendship of another woman, Hui Fei, her equal, played by Anna May Wong. Forces joined together, they are unstoppable!

Virginie Apiou