{"id":17986,"date":"2025-10-12T20:00:19","date_gmt":"2025-10-13T00:00:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/?p=17986"},"modified":"2025-10-12T16:58:35","modified_gmt":"2025-10-12T20:58:35","slug":"the-shanghai-gesture-1941-josef-von-sternberg","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/archives\/17986","title":{"rendered":"The Shanghai Gesture (1941, Josef von Sternberg)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Dixie (Toothpaste girl Phyllis Brooks) arrives in Shanghai from Brooklyn, immediately runs into trouble due to being broke and clueless, has to be rescued by hat-guy Vic Mature (before his postwar breakout in <em><a href=\"\/journal\/archives\/5574\">My Darling Clementine<\/a><\/em>).  At the casino, &#8220;Mother&#8221; is Ona Munson of <em>Scandal Sheet<\/em> (not <a href=\"\/journal\/archives\/4188\">that one<\/a>).  Neither of these gals are no Marlene Dietrich, though Ona does call herself <a href=\"\/journal\/archives\/7328\">Lily<\/a> at one point &#8211; but the movie is rescued by a delightful Gene Tierney (year after <em><a href=\"\/journal\/archives\/244\">The Return of Frank James<\/a><\/em>), who is the lost daughter of bigwig Walter Huston.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/journal\/image25\/gesture1.jpeg\"><\/p>\n<p>In fact everyone&#8217;s got Big Secrets and half the room wants to kill the other half when Mother invites all the major players to her new year&#8217;s table &#8211; between this and <em><a href=\"\/journal\/archives\/17930\">Mildred Pierce<\/a><\/em> I met my melodrama quota for the month.  Unfortunately these secrets and rivalries aren&#8217;t interesting, and the movie fizzles after a first half that was full of possibility.  Rosenbaum: &#8220;Given the censorship of the period, much of the decadence is implied rather than stated.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><em>Mother has been watching <a href=\"\/journal\/archives\/16896\">Uzumaki<\/a>:<\/em><br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/journal\/image25\/gesture3.jpeg\"><\/p>\n<p><em>This movie needs a restoration, I demand one:<\/em><br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/journal\/image25\/gesture2.jpeg\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dixie (Toothpaste girl Phyllis Brooks) arrives in Shanghai from Brooklyn, immediately runs into trouble due to being broke and clueless, has to be rescued by hat-guy Vic Mature (before his postwar breakout in My Darling Clementine). At the casino, &#8220;Mother&#8221; is Ona Munson of Scandal Sheet (not that one). Neither of these gals are no [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[416,2208,1242,1991],"class_list":["post-17986","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie","tag-1940s","tag-gene-tierney","tag-josef-von-sternberg","tag-shanghai"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17986","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17986"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17986\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18032,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17986\/revisions\/18032"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17986"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17986"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17986"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}