Shanghai Express

A film set on a train from Peking to Shanghai. The passengers are assorted. An English doctor, a missionary, a gambler, a merchant, a French officer and two women. Shanghai Lily is the most discussed. Her name is whispered in the carriage and everyone knows who she is. Doctor Harvey knows her. They were together five years ago and the separation came out of a misunderstanding. The journey passes through a civil war. The train is searched by government troops and then stopped by rebels. One passenger turns out to be the commander. He will take a hostage and choose someone from the train. From there the film becomes a negotiation. Lily makes an offer and asks in return for the doctor's release. She does not tell him. He does not know what she has done and draws the wrong conclusion. What the narrative is interested in is not love but trust: at its centre is a man refusing to believe a woman's word. Hui Fei is the second woman. The character played by Anna May Wong makes the narrative's most decisive move and tells nobody. The image is the film's real work. Light divides the faces with gauze, smoke and the lines of shutters; the narrow space inside the train is layered constantly. The film won the Academy Award for cinematography. Marlene Dietrich, Clive Brook, Anna May Wong and Warner Oland are in the cast. Josef von Sternberg directed. Who it is for: anyone who likes early sound Hollywood and melodrama built visually. Who it is not for: anyone troubled by the period's depiction of China; some characters are types and some parts were given to Western actors.