During the Chinese Civil War, several passangers board a train from Peking to Shanghai. Among them are Shanghai Lily, a prostitute, who meets her ex-boyfriend again, British captain Harvey, who left her angrily years ago when she wanted to test his love for her by coming in contact with someone else. Among the passangers are also Hui Fei, gambler Sam, boarding house owner Mrs. Haggerty, a French officer. The train is stopped by the Communist rebels led by Chang, who takes Harvey as a hostage to exchange him for a captured fellow rebel from the government. Chang wants to blind Harvey, but Lily persuades Chang to let Harvey go and she will be with Chang. Hui Fei stabs and kills Chang, and the train continues its journey. On the bus terminal, Harvey and Lily make up.
The fourth out of seven movie cooperations between director Josef von Sternberg and actress Marlene Dietrich, "Shanghai Express" was a huge success at the US box office, yet is today only intermittently impressive. Set on a cozy journey via train, interrupted by a rebel taking its passengers as hostages, the storyline is meandering itself between several genres, without all those pieces joining together into a cohesive whole. Some neat moments amuse (the train has to pass between two buildings, so hundreds of people and some cows move away from the railroad), and some ideas have charm, such as when the heroine Shanghai Lily translates to French and finds out a French man was dishonorably discharged from the Army, but still keeps wearing the uniform during his intended visit to his sister, since he doesn't want to disappoint her. The dialogue is often kitschy and conventional, especially in the finale, yet even they have their moments: when Lily finds out rebel Chang wants to mutilate Harvey, there is this exchange between them: "The Chinese government will have your head for it!" - "The Chinese government would have had my head long ago if it hadn't been such a good head". It's never clear why Lily won't tell Harvey she was coerced by Chang to save Harvey's life, which makes the last 20 minutes play out like a soap opera with secrets only for the sake of it, when being honest would have made far more sense, but the movie is still intruiging just enough to be remembered even today.
Grade:++
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