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Poetry of the locomotive, it passes under the camera and suffuses the screen with smoke. From Peking to Shanghai during the civil war, forward into space and backwards into the passengers' pasts, "I suppose every train carries its cargo of sin." The scandalous courtesan (Marlene Dietrich) travels alongside another devastating dame of mystery (Anna May Wong), the reunion with the estranged lover (Clive Brook) likens his military medal to her diamond brooch. Ponderous preacher (Lawrence Grant), stout gambler (Eugene Pallette), gaunt merchant (Gustav von Seyffertitz), fussy biddy (Louise Closser Hale). "Don't you find respectable people terribly... dull?" The revolutionary leader (Warner Oland) rides incognito, the railway hijacking is but one of the tale's various shifts of power. Josef von Sternberg's rarefied universe, immaculate clutter for obsessed figures to glide through, the outside world passes by as flickers on the mini-screens of the compartment's windows, cf. Bertolucci's Il Conformista. (A branding iron burning through veils demonstrates the danger behind the décor.) "You only had my respect before. Now you have my admiration." Incomparable visual rhythms, silhouettes against steam and protracted lap dissolves that interlace compositions. Maupassant's "Boule de suif," Maugham's Rain, Gogol's Dead Souls are taken account of, the joke on image over word has a Gallic officer (Émile Chautard) in resplendent uniform lost in translation. The tug of war for "the notorious white flower of China" turns out to be a test of faith, thus a pair of bejeweled hands praying in the darkness. (Dietrich is later isolated in a lustrous pose flawless but for the trembling hand holding the cigarette, Warhol's portraiture avant la lettre.) "I live by my own code," the Sternberg spiritual-stylistic credo. The immediate response is by Berkeley ("Shanghai Lil," Footlight Parade). Cinematography by Lee Garmes. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |