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Kierkegaard's movement of faith, by the grace of Mae West. The Bitter Tea of General Yen is brought to bear on Frisco Doll the Chinatown concubine, spangled and haloed she sings "I'm an Occidental Woman in an Oriental Mood for Love." Her keeper (Harold Huber) raises jealousy to a philosophy ("There are two perfectly good men. One dead, the other unborn"), she kills him and hops a steamer to the Great White North. "Barmy over a skirt," the stout captain (Victor McLaglen) squeezes the passenger tightly, to her insouciant annoyance. "You said you'd protect me, not wrestle me." The traveling evangelist (Helen Jerome Eddy) expires mid-journey by her side—the ideal identity to steal, or a harbinger of redemption? Raoul Walsh has this mainly as a paraphrase of Sadie Thompson, with raffish Jack London notes adduced once the action reaches the gold-rush boom town. When West mouths spiritual platitudes in a black Quaker bonnet, McLaglen can't help coughing to mask a smirk. "The spirit of charity" is serious business all the same, she speaks the lingo of sinners and manages to wrangle saloon gals into the vacant tabernacle. (They become Peckinpah's wedding flower girls in Ride the High Country.) A rowdy gathering, plenty of songs ("It's Better to Give Than to Receive") and gags (one parishioner sings along heartily, then snaps into faux-slumber as the collection basket passes by). The smitten Mountie (Phillip Reed) declares his love but the heroine is much more attuned to the roughneck at sea, "no oil painting... but a fascinating monster." Five decades pass and it turns into Shanghai Surprise, for no good reason. With Harry Beresford, Lucille Gleason, Conway Tearle, Esther Howard, and Soo Yong. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |