01
The Scarlet Empress
Why this pick
Sternberg and Dietrich again turn romantic entrapment into ravishing, highly stylised imagery, with a woman navigating desire and power amid baroque imperial decadence.
A FILM WORTH A CLOSER LOOKTHE FEATURE PRESENTATION
MOVIE1932 1h 22m USA
IF THIS ONE STAYED WITH YOU
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Shanghai Express
AdventureDramaThriller
CINEHUNCH / THE NEXT FRAME
Keep the feeling.
SIMILAR PICKS / A PERSONAL CONNECTION
If you loved Shanghai Express, try these.
01
02
Dishonored
Why this pick
Dietrich’s poised, enigmatic screen presence anchors another Sternberg fever dream: espionage, sacrifice and erotic danger shaped through stark shadows and controlled glamour.
03
The Shanghai Gesture
Why this pick
For Shanghai Express’s exoticised nocturnal atmosphere and moral peril, this offers Sternberg’s more delirious vision of an enclosed foreign port full of vice, secrets and fatal attraction.
04
Blonde Venus
Why this pick
Another Dietrich–Sternberg collaboration in which performance, glamour and vulnerability coexist; its emotional stakes emerge through elegant visual design rather than plain melodrama.
05
Letter from an Unknown Woman
Why this pick
If Shanghai Express’s deepest pull is its lost-love melancholy, Ophuls delivers a more sustained, exquisitely composed romantic tragedy driven by memory, longing and emotional restraint.
Finding the atmosphere, tension and little details that made this one stay with you.
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01 / THE STORY
A little about the film.
In 1931, China is embroiled in a Chinese Civil War. Friends of British Captain Donald "Doc" Harvey (Clive Brook) envy him because the fabulously notorious Shanghai Lily (Marlene Dietrich) is a fellow passenger on the express train from Beijing to Shanghai. Because the name means nothing to him, they inform him that she is a "coaster" or "woman who lives by her wits along the China coast" – in other words, a courtesan. On the journey, Harvey encounters Lily, who turns out to be his former lover, Madeline. Five years earlier, she had played a trick on Harvey to gauge his love for her, but it backfired and he left her. She frankly informs him that, in the interim, "It took more than one man to change my name to Shanghai Lily." When Lily makes it clear that she still cares deeply for him, it becomes apparent that his feelings also have not changed when she inadvertently sees the watch she gave him with her photograph still in it.
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02 / FACES IN THE FRAME
The people who bring it to life.
Marlene Dietrich
Shanghai Lily
Clive Brook
Captain Donald Harvey
Anna May Wong
Hui Fei
Warner Oland
Mr. Henry Chang