The Shanghai Gesture
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Poppy Smith: "You said Doctor Omar. Doctor of what?" Doctor Omar: "Doctor of nothing, Miss Smith. It sounds important and hurts no one. Unlike most doctors." |
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The Shanghai Gesture is a 1941 American film noir directed by Josef von Sternberg and starring Gene Tierney, Walter Huston, Victor Mature, and Ona Munson. It is based on a Broadway play of the same name by John Colton, which was adapted for the screen by Sternberg and produced by Arnold Pressburger for United Artists. It was the last Hollywood film Sternberg ever completed: Howard Hughes fired him halfway through production of Macao in 1951, as well as from Jet Pilot the year prior.
Plot
This early noir drama explores the decadent lives and secret pasts of all the main characters, following many stories in an almost-surreal gambling house owned by "Mother" Gin Sling (played by Munson).
A young woman, Victoria Charteris, also known as Poppy Smith (played by Tierney), is out for some excitement in Shanghai, and enters Gin Sling's establishment.
Dragon-lady Gin Sling worked herself up from poverty to buy the casino, only to now see it in danger of being taken over by Sir Guy Charteris (played by Huston), a wealthy entrepreneur who has purchased a large area of Shanghai, and is forcing Gin Sling to vacate by the coming Chinese New Year.
Under orders from Gin Sling, who has found out Poppy is Charteris's daughter, a fez-wearing Doctor Omar (played by Mature) 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 surprise of his own to spring on Gin Sling.
