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Absolutely Fantastic

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

The opening scenes in this movie are some of the best in cinema history. Start with the lovely blond in distress. Rescued by the man who seems to offer a very questionable way out of her predicament. Cut to the teeming nightclub. The frenetic activity just to set the stage for the appearance of the heroine. And what an entrance. Gene Tierney at the height of her beauty lit and shot by one of the masters of film. The director's understanding of the beauty of his star is all important and hear is one of the great examples. The designer Oleg Cassini provides the fabulous gowns. Their are some great lines in this movie but the real entertainment is watching a great director showcase a great beauty

Dreadful film best summarizes this 1941 movie.Businessman Walter Huston buys up land and wants to evict gambling house owner Ona Munson. Was Ms. Munson always cast as the gambling house dame? Remember her as Belle Watling, owner of the brothel and gambling in the memorable "Gone With the Wind?" By the way, what did Munson have on top of her head, a bird cage? Just like the rest of the film, it is absolutely ridiculous.Gin-sling, or whatever her name is, recognizes Huston and in a memorable Chinese New Year celebration reveals herself to him. Gene Tierney did some pretty good acting here. In a way, she reminded me of her part in 1946's "The Razor Edge," but the latter film was so far superior to this junk.The film seems to drag at the tables. You know the voice of the Frenchman who calls the numbers-Vingt-neuf rouge (29-red, etc.)

When watching this movie I felt that Sternberg had my emotions on marionette strings, he also wired his box of tricks up to my nervous system.The (loose) story involves a casino in Shanghai, run by the inscrutable Madame Gin Sling. An Englishman wants to demolish it for a new development, and so the games begin. The casino is Sternberg's chocolate box reverie, full of strange confections, such as Dr Omar, the improbably clear-browed Omar Khayyam-quoting gigolo weighed down under a heavy yellow cloak, fez and full tuxedo in what would have been a sweltering casino.I've a feel for a saucy movie, and I like plenty of the variety of condiment that the restraints of Hays produced. There's many a moment in this movie where my sofa softly absorbed my muttered blasphemies, for example getting an eyeful of Gene Tierney ("Poppy Smith") for the first time, and a "did they just really do that?!" query, when well-named opium-woman Poppy Smith says, "I wonder, does he sleep in his fez" as she cops a load of Victor Mature's Doctor Omar. Phyllis Brooks as Dixie has her own prefigurement of the famous Basic Instinct shot.It's got the smarts as well, whipcrack dialogue and lots of warnings about existential folly, making it clear that hate is always based on misunderstanding.The ending sequence is pretty much hysterical, symbolic, and profound all over. Sternberg brings life back to two Omar Khayyam quotes for the finale: "I sent my soul through the invisible, / some letters of that after-life to spell, / and by and by my soul did return, and answered, / 'I myself am Heaven and Hell'.""The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, / Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit / Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line, / Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it."The first quote to me suggests that one's perception of events, the way you respond, and one's attitude to life is the primary determinant of happiness.The point of fatalism and the burden of the past is conveyed by the second quote is visually echoed by both of Sir Guy and Madame Gin Sling being shadowed by rather chilling anonymous presences (played by Mike Mazurki and Maria Ouspenskaya).

***SPOILERS*** Originally on Broadway in 1926 "The Shanghai Gesture" was a lot hotter and spicier hen it was made into a movie some 15 years later. The play involved drugs prostitution and a high class whore house that was replaced by Mother Gin Sing's Casino in the very sanitized, due to the Hollywood Hayes Commission, movie version.In the move Mother Gin Sing, Ona Munson, who runs a very profitable casino in downtown Shanghai is threatened to be evicted by big time British land developer Sir Guy Charteris, Walter Huston, who plans to convert it into a luxury high rise overlooking the South china Sea. While running her casino Mother Gin Sing spots this English woman Poppy, Gene Terney, at the bar and immediately takes a shine to her. Getting Poppy drunk on drinks thats on the house Mother Gin Sing encourages her to gamble the night away giving Poppy unlimited credit where she ends up getting as much as 20,000 Bitish pounds in debt. What we in the audience as well as Poppy don't know is that Moher Gin Sing is hatching a plan that in the end will save her casino from being foreclosed and taken over by Sir Guy! And it's that sinister and evil plan that's she's planning to lay on the unsuspecting Sir Guy at the closing party for the by then defunct casino on the forthcoming Chinese New year that he Poppy and a number of other Shanghai luminaries are invited to attend!The movie is a take on Dante's Inferno where hell is a casino where there's no end to the action and where the action never ends. We see people playing the tables for what seems like eternity never running out of money with money being by far the cheapest commodity in the place. The big surprise is at the going away party when Mother Gin Sing spills the beans of Sir Guy in what a low life heel he really is in what he did to her when she was a young girl some 20 years earlier.****SPOILERS*** The by far biggest surprise in the film is what Mother Gin Sing's relationship is with Poppy that Sir Guy's been hiding for her all these years. The revelations that Sir Guy brings out is so shocking that it leads Mother Gin Sing to completely flip out and end up doing something that not even her money status and political and police connections can cover up or get her out of.Strange casting in the movie with Victor Mature looking as if he's stoned on pot as this spaced out looking guy called Doctor Omar who thinks he's a poet but, like those of us listening to his corny lyrics, really doesn't have the talent to be one. There's also in the movie cast the hulking and non Asiatic looking, with a deep Florida suntan, ex-professional wrestler Mike Mazurki playing of all people a Chinese coolie.