Josef von Sternberg’s direction, Lee Garmes’ cinematography, and especially the performance by Marlene Dietrich, elevate this otherwise rather mediocre story to the stature of a true classic in my view.
The plot involves the stop-and- start rekindling of the romance between a woman known as Shanghai Lily (Dietrich) and Captain Donald Harvey (Clive Brook), a British army doctor. Set in the middle of a Chinese civil war, most of the story unwinds aboard a train called The Shanghai Express. Traveling from Peiping (Peking) to Shanghai, and carrying these two as well as their fellow passengers, the train is detained en route by the ruthless Chinese warlord Henry Chang (Warner Oland), who is looking among the passengers to find a suitable hostage to exchange to the British for one of his captured lieutenants.
Disillusioned in a previous romance with a girl named Madeleine, the doctor had left China. Now returned after five years, he meets up with her aboard the Shanghai Express. Madeleine has changed her appearance and is now known as Shanghai Lily, “The notorious white flower of China.” Though strongly drawn back into her willing arms, he struggles with his distrust of her sincerity and faithfulness during the long train journey and their encounters with Chang.
Anna May Wong is cast as the enigmatic and inscrutable Chinese beauty, Hui Fei . Lusted after by Chang, she is secretly bent on his destruction. Lily, meanwhile, though cruelly disdained and condemned by many of the other passengers, is quietly winning them over with her innate goodness and willingness to sacrifice herself because of her deep love for the doctor.
Marlene Dietrich glows like a live ember on the screen, particularly in the several solitary, ruminative, close-up studies by the camera. She says more with her eyes and subtle facial expressions than the rest of the cast speak out loud.
The train becomes almost as much of a character in the story as the actors who inhabit it. Art direction, camera angles, and lighting, as well as competent supporting performances by veteran actors such as Eugene Pallette (It Happened One Night) as the cantankerous American passenger, Sam Salt, all go to make this an exciting and compelling classic film.
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