Shanghai Express (1932) [Criterion Collection]

Director: Josef von Sternberg (as Josef Von Sternberg)
Writers: Jules Furthman (screen play), Harry Hervey (based on the story by)
Stars: Marlene Dietrich, Clive Brook, Anna May Wong

Many passengers on the Shanghai Express are more concerned that the notorious Shanghai Lil is on board than the fact that a civil war is going on that may make the trip take more than three days. The British Army doctor, Donald Harvey, knew Lil before she became a famous "coaster." A fellow passenger defines a coaster as "a woman who lives by her wits along the China coast." When Chinese guerillas stop the train, Dr. Harvey is selected as the hostage. Lil saves him, but can she make him believe that she really hasn't changed from the woman he loved five years before?

Extras:
- New interview with film scholar Homay King


Dietrich & von Sternberg in Hollywood (Spine #930):
- Morocco (1930)
- Dishonored (1931)
- Shanghai Express (1932)
- Blonde Venus (1932)
- The Scarlet Empress (1934)
- The Devil Is a Woman (1935)

Tasked by studio executives with finding the next great screen siren, visionary Hollywood director Josef von Sternberg joined forces with rising German actor Marlene Dietrich, kicking off what would become one of the most legendary partnerships in cinema history. Over the course of six films produced by Paramount in the 1930s, the pair refined their shared fantasy of pleasure, beauty, and excess. Dietrich’s coolly transgressive mystique was a perfect match for the provocative roles von Sternberg cast her in—including a sultry chanteuse, a cunning spy, and the hedonistic Catherine the Great—and the filmmaker captured her allure with chiaroscuro lighting and opulent design, conjuring fever-dream visions of exotic settings from Morocco to Shanghai. Suffused with frank sexuality and worldly irony, these deliriously entertaining masterpieces are landmarks of cinematic artifice.








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