Tags
Language
Tags
<<
June 2025
Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
8 9 10 11 12 13 14
15 16 17 18 19 20 21
22 23 24 25 26 27 28
29 30 1 2 3 4 5
    Attention❗ To save your time, in order to download anything on this site, you must be registered 👉 HERE. If you do not have a registration yet, it is better to do it right away. ✌

    ( • )( • ) ( ͡⚆ ͜ʖ ͡⚆ ) (‿ˠ‿)
    SpicyMags.xyz
    1. Home
    2. Movies
    3. The Shanghai Gesture (1941)

    The Shanghai Gesture (1941)

    Posted By: Someonelse
    Date: 1 Aug 2011 09:26:00
    The Shanghai Gesture (1941)

    The Shanghai Gesture (1941)
    DVD5 Films Sans Frontieres | ISO | PAL 4:3 (720x576) | 01:34:11 | 4,18 Gb
    Audio: French (Dolby AC3, 2 ch); English (Dolby AC3, 2 ch) | Subs: French
    Genre: Drama, Fim-Noir | Nominated for 2 Oscars | USA

    A young woman, Poppy, out for excitement in Shanghai, enters a gambling house owned by "Mother" Gin Sling, a dragon-lady who worked herself up from poverty to buy the casino. Sir Guy Charteris, wealthy entrepreneur, has purchased a large area of Shanghai, forcing Gin Sling to vacate by the coming Chinese New Year. Under orders from Gin Sling, who has found out Poppy is Charteris' daughter, the smarmy Doctor Omar leads Poppy deeper and deeper into an addiction to gambling and alcohol. Gin Sling, realizing that Charteris was her long-ago husband who she thinks abandoned her, plans her revenge by inviting Charteris to a Chinese New Year dinner party to expose his past indiscretions. Charteris, however, has a suprise of his own to spring on Gin Sling.

    IMDB

    Josef von Sternberg's ("The Scarlet Empress"/"The Blue Angel"/"The Devil is a Woman") last great Hollywood film is based on a 1925 play by John Colton that required over 30 revisions ordered by the Hays Office censors before it was deemed acceptable. In one unreleased censored version, attributed to writer Jules Furthman, the blemished noirish heroine named Mother Gin Sling is instead named Mother Goddamn and runs a brothel instead of a casino. What remains from all the cuts is the surreal baroque setting–a gesture to the descent of mankind into the bowels of the earth–a casino designed like Dante's Inferno.

    The Shanghai Gesture (1941)

    Despite the forced changes, this is still a delirious masterpiece of decadence and sexual depravity that surrounds itself with Eastern motifs that are meant to mystify rather than enlighten. The film is aglow with delightful perversity, a depraved Victor Mature saying "Allah is great," the constant threat of violence and fear of the unknown, and taunting nonsensical lingo such as "You likee Chinee New Year?", as uttered by a giant coolie (Mike Mazurki), speaking in Pidgin English to the Walter Huston character, a real estate magnate who leaves the casino bewildered after being shocked beyond his wildest expectations by past events coming back to haunt him.

    The Shanghai Gesture (1941)

    "Gesture" is set in modern times in the free international port of Shanghai, inhabited by people of all kinds of nationalities and described as a modern equivalent of the Tower of Babel. At the waterfront, a dark-skinned bisexual named Dr. Omar (Victor Mature), dressed in a fez and a white cape, who calls himself "Doctor of nothing, poet of Shanghai…and Gomorrah"), and his fellow decadent, Percival Montgomery Howe (Clyde Fillmore), the go-between for conducting illegal activity, bribe the police to allow broke Brooklyn chorus girl Dixie Pomeroy (Phyllis Brooks) entry into Shanghai in exchange for working in the casino run by the crooked control-freak Chinese woman Mother Gin Sling (Ona Munson).

    The Shanghai Gesture (1941)

    The main plot centers around the corrupt police commissioner (Albert Basserman) telling Mother Gin Sling that even her bribes can't stop her establishment from being closed by the new Brit tycoon owner of the property, Sir Guy Charteris (Walter Huston). Mother Gin Sling gets the dirt on Sir Guy through her sources and discovers Sir Guy lived in China as a young man, married a Chinese woman and has a daughter, and was also involved in some nefarious financial deals. The daughter turns out to be nicknamed Poppy (Gene Tierney), which indicates she has a drug problem. The self-willed, helpless, and high-strung loose cannon of a girl, is encouraged to gamble by Mother Gin Sling's pimpish associate Omar–who becomes her constant companion. Poppy runs up a big debt and adds gambling as another one of her addictions, but refuses to leave Shanghai at her father's request.

    The Shanghai Gesture (1941)

    The awaited showdown between Sir Guy and the pleasure goddess comes about when he's coerced into accepting a dinner invitation to her Chinese New Year's celebration at her casino, where the other guests are made up of the corrupt elite of Shanghai (a superb supporting cast of the likes of Maria Ouspenskaya, Eric Blore, Grayce Hampton, and others, offering sharply drawn eccentric performances). This is to be the last day that the casino stays open, but Mother Gin Sling plans to blackmail the businessman. Sir Guy doesn't recognize that she was the Chinese babe he married, stole her family wealth, and abandoned. Mother Gin Sling has been filled with hatred for a long time planning to get even with her hypocritical former husband, who was then known as Dawson. Sir Guy believed she died when he tried killing her, and seems genuinely shocked to see her again–not recognizing her at first under her masklike doll face. It then becomes Sir Guy's turn to shock her, as he mentions that she's the mother of his spoiled-rotten disobedient daughter. When daughter and mother meet again with this new knowledge–the animosity is so great that the mother loses her self-control over her vitriolic daughter and shoots her dead. Mother Gin Sling tells her associates, I won't be able to bribe my way out of this one.

    It's a film where the normal is the perverse and where nothing is left to chance, not even the gambling in the casino.

    Dennis Schwartz: "Ozus' World Movie Reviews"
    The Shanghai Gesture (1941)

    The unabashed and almost flippant garishness of The Shanghai Gesture is what draws one in immediately. A dress isn’t just a dress, it is a lavish gown hung elegantly on the shoulders of Gene Tierney. A light bulb isn’t just a light bulb, it is one of many cascading sparkles drifting from the ornate chandeliers. Mother Gin Sling, the vocal point of the film, is the animated version of a decorative Chinese nick-knack you might find on your grandmother’s shelf. She is sleek, and graceful, as she slowly, and deliberately delivers every line. Every character is much more than the surface immediately reveals, he or she is a brash, cynical portrait of self-absorbed bitterness, dangling from their past. All of them appear wild and free among said surroundings, but they are prisoners of debt, some debt is monetary, most are lies they’ve fooled themselves into believing.

    The Shanghai Gesture (1941)

    In his typical fashion, Josef von Sternberg loves to cram every detail he can imagine into every frame of this film, from meticulously painted walls, to scores and scores of loud and colorful extras, crowding and plugging up every gap of the frame. At certain points you wait for people to start fumbling over each other.

    The first shot of Mother Gin Sling’s casino mimics a bustling bee hive. The casino is set up in an open cone shape, with different levels offering different games. When we first set eyes on it, we can’t decipher what is happening; we hear a multitude of different languages being shouted over one another, casino chips clapping together, workers sprinting from one end to another, and hundreds of dapper men and women, glistening under the chandeliers. This sets the tone for the entire film, as each scene has brilliant sparks of chaos.

    The Shanghai Gesture (1941)

    It doesn’t take very long before we are mesmerized by each character. They carry themselves through the chaos with grace and ease, all of them distinctively beautiful in their one way. They are very detailed like everything else in the frame, but they are all so very empty. They’re hollow ornaments set against the backdrop of decadence, searching to be filled. Von Sternberg emphasizes this pain in every close up. He allows us to measure the creases in their faces, the tinge of pain behind their forced smiles, and the slight waver in their voices. Soon, every detail crammed into each frame comes to represent a loss or regret. The overall breadth of each setting mocks the characters and their emptiness.

    Like a layer cake, von Sternberg just keeps stacking, one beautifully cluttered moment after another, until finally it comes crashing down in a shocking plume of cold soulless dust. The remaining characters move on, having lost something, but they continue to live as always, fully prepared to bury any pain with lies.

    James Merolla, Sound on Sight
    The Shanghai Gesture (1941)

    Download:





    Interchangable links.
    Many Thanks to Spendius.
    Welcome to My Blog!

    No More Mirrors.
    Download full movie The Shanghai Gesture (1941)
    Subtitles (from opensubtitles.org)
    UPWARDS