Blucher One of the worst movies I've ever seen

Tacticalin An absolute waste of money

Motompa Go in cold, and you're likely to emerge with your blood boiling. This has to be seen to be believed.

Sienna-Rose Mclaughlin The movie really just wants to entertain people.

utgard14 Wealthy businessman Sir Guy Charteris (Walter Huston) plans to force Shanghai gambling den owner Mother Gin Sling (Ona Munson) to sell her business. She retaliates by corrupting his daughter Poppy (Gene Tierney) with help from gigolo Dr. Omar (Victor Mature). Turns out Sir Guy and Mother Gin Sling have a past history that leads to a plot twist viewers will see coming a mile and a half away.Gene Tierney is jaw-droppingly beautiful and Josef von Sternberg makes the most of her beauty with as many close-ups as possible. The camera certainly loves her. Her acting, which seems to be widely dismissed in most critical reviews I've read, is passable but unimpressive. Ona Munson's Mother Gin Sling is a silly character, decked out like Mrs. Fu Manchu throughout the film. Instant camp. Victor Mature laughably hams it up as an Arabian gigolo. Most of the cast is enjoyable on a campy level except Phyllis Brooks. She's great as a ballsy chorus girl who seems like she walked out of another movie and accidentally wound up in this one. In another film, Brooks might be the prettiest actress in the cast. But alongside Tierney few could stand out.Despite the cosmopolitan cast and setting being reminiscent of the later (and superior) Casablanca, this is a mostly forgettable and stagey melodrama. About the only two things people are likely to take away from this one are Gene Tierney's stunning good looks and Ona Munson's ridiculous costumes.

bkoganbing Although The Shanghai Gesture was nominated for two Oscars for music scoring and for art&set design, the film is a rather creaky old fashioned melodrama. Based on a Broadway play it is directed by Joseph Von Sternberg who could never recapture what he and Marlene Dietrich did for China setting story like Shanghai Express.We're not on a train in this one, this is a story concerning Shanghai which was an international port in every sense of the word with about fifteen western powers and Japan having a piece of turf that their country's laws governed, not China's. In the western quarter, British section is Madame Gin Sling's popular nightclub and casino, but industrialist Walter Huston has plans for some urban renewal and Gin Sling's club is slated for demolition.Madame Gin Sling is played by Ona Munson who is the best in the film. In Gone With The Wind she played Belle Watling who had a similar establishment in Atlanta. But Gin Sling is lots different than Belle Watling. And she recognizes Walter Huston as her long lost former husband who abandoned her years ago. She's got special plans for him that involve his daughter Gene Tierney who is a spoiled brat of a girl.All I can say is this one really goes over the top. The Shanghai Gesture is a play not likely to revived any time soon. The cast does what they can with it, but it's way too melodramatic for current taste.

Robert J. Maxwell I don't see too much reason to go on at length about this strikingly photographed von Sternberg number -- except maybe two.One is that there are some pretty clever lines in it, lifted, presumably, from John Colton's play. Examples: Gene Tierney: "This place is so deliciously evil. You can smell it." Tierney to Victor Mature: "You call yourself Doctor Roma. Doctor of what?" Mature: "Of nothing. It sounds important. I hurt no one, unlike some others." The second reason for seeing this is Gene Tierney when she was twenty years old, as "Poppy", prodigal daughter of ultra-rich Walter Huston. Especially with the way that von Sternberg lights her, it's hard to imagine anything approaching more closely feminine perfection. She also puts more energy into her role -- drunk, seductive, throwing away money -- than in any other part I've seen her play. That she overacts, that she may not be able to act AT ALL, is really a negligible consideration. She is what she is, like a blade of grass, like the Grand Canyon, like the freaking Pleiades.The story is some nonsense about gambling and real estate and family dynamics and morality in Mother Gin Sling's Casino, with Ona Munson as the least likely Chinese matron imaginable. A man loses at the roulette wheel and tries to shoot himself before being calmed down. (How do you "try" to shoot yourself?) The croupier is Marcel Dalio, who has, I think, been a croupier in other films and has appeared in three movies ripped fresh from the quivering flanks of Ernest Hemingway's works.You know, when you come right down to it, Shanghai must have been a fascinating city in the 1930s. It was cosmopolitan, raffish, colorful, and its name translates as "on the water." The U. S. Marines lost the bones of the original "Peking Man" in Shanghai as World War II was breaking out. Things were happening in Shanghai. I understand they're beginning to happen again.Anyway, I found the whole thing a bit boring but others may like it more.

JohnWelles "The Shanghai Gesture" (1941), an early audition to the film noir genre (made in the same year as "The Maltese Falcon") and directed by the great Josef von Sternberg, based on the play of the same name by John Colton and starring the luminous Gene Tierney, Walter Huston and Victor Mature.The plot follows Mother Gin Sling's (Ona Munson) casino in Shanghai and the various exploits of the people in it, like Poppy Smith (Tierney) and her infatuation with the Arab Doctor Omar (Mature) and Gin Sling trying to stop the Shanghai authorities from shutting down the place.This has obviously been heavily cut (the title is never properly explained) by the censors over at the Hays office and that is hardly surprising: in the original play, the gambling house was a brothel, Gene Tierney's character was addicted to drugs (only her name gives any indication of that), and the Mother Gin Sling was called Mother Goddam. Several parts of the film simply just do not make coherent sense and von Sternberg, as has been noted by film critic Tony Rayns, seems to be more interested in the luxurious set of the casino and trying to make Tierney look as beautiful as possible with the aid of his marvellous cinematographer Paul Ivano anyway rather than tell a exciting good story. The actors, under the circumstances perform remarkably well: Victor Mature playing an Arab is as preposterous as John Wayne as Genghis Kahn, but it works, unbelievably though it may seem and gives the best performance of the motion picture. The young Gene Tierney, while not at the height of her acting prowess yet, is still vivid and Walter Huston, likewise not in his finest surrounds gives a solid piece of acting and a host of well know faces pop up through at the movie: Maria Ouspenskaya, Eric Blore and Mike Mazurki all make appearances. An over blown delight like "Duel in the Sun" (1946, which von Sternberg also had an un-credited hand in) that is so fun despite or because of its flaws; it is truly one of a kind.