The Shanghai Gesture (1941)
Directed by Josef von Sternberg

Film Review

An aura of unremitting evil hangs over The Shanghai Gesture, director Josef von Sternberg's last great film, as palpable and intoxicating as the bitter stench of an opium den.  The lower depths of Shanghai provided a popular location for European and American filmmakers of the 1930s and 40s, and it is hard to imagine a more suitable setting for noir-tinted dramas that waded into the seedier facets of human experience.  Von Sternberg's depiction of Shanghai is heavily mired in its western stereotype, a festering nest of vice and hedonism whose sole purpose is to corrupt and destroy those who yield themselves to empty pleasures.  At its heart is the soulless casino owner Mother Gin Sling, a spiderish femme fatale with a suitably Medusa-like hairstyle who delights in watching her victims become snared in her web of addiction.  Her domain is a gambling hall in Hell, the centrepiece of which is an arena in which fortunes are expunged and lives ruined according to the caprice of the roulette wheel, for the amusement of those watching down from the tiered balconies, like the gods of Olympus.

The Shanghai Gesture may lack many of the narrative ingredients of the classic film noir drama, but stylistically it has everything that we associate with the genre, and it is certainly one of Von Sternberg's most chillingly atmospheric works.   The film is a massively toned down adaptation of a stage play by John Colton, which was highly controversial when it was first performed on Broadway in the 1920s, not least because it was seen as an assault on Western imperialism in the Far East.  To meet the stringent requirements of the Hollywood censors, the more sensational aspects of the play had to be reworked or else removed altogether, so the brothel becomes a casino and allusions to drug taking and sexual slavery are far less explicit.  That said, The Shanghai Gesture is still an extremely daring film for its time and it is surprising how much Von Sternberg was able to get past the censor.
 
In the first of many memorable film noir outings, Gene Tierney  is stunning as the vulnerable heroine who falls prey to the ruthless Mother Gin Sling.  Even though her character is far from sympathetic, Tierney compels us to feel for her as she is emotionally ripped apart when she tries to free herself from her father's well-meaning tyranny, only to end up as helpless as a lamb that has strayed into the wolf's lair.  Victor Mature is subtly sinister as the parasitic Egyptian mystic who unwittingly guides Tierney to her doom, but he is a timorous minnow compared with the film's main villian, played with relish by a superb Ona Munson.  Munson is best remembered today for playing the prostitute Belle Watling in Gone with the Wind (1939), but her portrayal of Mother Gin Sling is easily the highpoint of her career.  As the inscrutable and deliciously evil casino owner, Munson dominates every scene she appears in, and even when she is out of camera shot we can still feel her presence, in the brooding atmosphere that pervades the film.

Unlike many contemporary film noir dramas, The Shanghai Gesture is far more driven by character than by plot.  The film takes time to establish the characters, making us aware that there is far more to them than first meets the eye.  After a slow build up, the two central protagonists - Gin Sling and the seemingly unblemished entrepreneur Charteris (Walter Huston) - are finally brought together in a gripping denouement in which the moral positions of the two characters are spectacularly reversed, amid the festivities of the Chinese New Year.  The relentless cacophony of fireworks in the background creates the impression of a palace under siege, adding to the tension as Gin Sling's chess game reaches its dramatic climax.  But there is a terrible twist in store and as the casino owner's past is exposed our sympathies immediately switch to her.  We feel nothing for Charteris as retribution swoops down upon him; it is Mother Gin Sling whom we pity as she sees herself reflected in Charteris's daughter and is driven to her final act of revenge.  Like any good film noir, The Shanghai Gesture reminds us that in life there are no moral absolutes - good and evil are merely ideas that we project onto what we see, and what we see depends on where we happen to be standing at the time.

Film Synopsis

In the 1930s, Shanghai is a thriving city of commerce, a magnet for tourists and businessmen, but it has a darker side.  In the less salubrious parts of the city, casinos, brothels and opium dens prosper, feeding on the westerners' appetite for all that is sordid, like maggots feasting on a rotting corpse.  Sir Guy Charteris, a wealthy English entrepreneur, intends to change all this.  He is about is to buy up a large swathe of the city's slum area and redevelop this into a vice-free zone.  One of the casualties of his scheme will be a popular casino owned by Mother Gin Sling, a self-proclaimed warlord of the Chinese underworld.  What Charteris does not know is that his daughter Victoria has succumbed to the gambling bug and is busy squandering her fortune in the casino, assisted by Gin Sling's generosity in extending her unlimited credit.  An American showgirl, Dixie Pomeroy, has given the casino owner information that will prove useful in thwarting Charteris's ambitions.  Victoria is the bait that will hook the Englishman and lure him into Mother Gin Sling's lair for a merciless reckoning...