Watch The Ship from Shanghai For Free

Terrible acting, screenplay and direction.

It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

In far eastern Shanghai, wealthy westerners enjoy singing and dancing to the hit song "Singin' in the Rain" (a contemporary hit then, memorably revived for MGM's 1952 musical). Among the party-goers, American playboy Conrad Nagel (as Howard Vazey) romances British socialite Kay Johnson (as Dorothy Daley). With three other upper-class passengers, they get on board a yacht bound for San Francisco. Brutish and angry steward Louis Wolheim (as Ted) is on "The Ship from Shanghai" and, as you quickly know, he hates snooty rich people – with a passion. "Willowy English girls, fair and pink" arouse Mr. Wolheim, who plans to take over the ship and abduct Ms. Johnson...Making his "all-talking" feature debut, director Charles Brabin is clearly getting his feet wet under the new microphones. He is unable to lead an interesting cast to good, consistent performances. New to motion pictures, Johnson comes across best; she had just co-starred with Mr. Nagel in Cecil B. DeMille's "Dynamite" (1929). Watching Nagel's career falter is sad; he was an engaging and popular actor. "Silent" film stars Carmel Myers and Holmes Herbert (as Viola and Paul Thorpe) attend to the secondary roles, with veteran stage actress Zeffie Tilbury on board as an old society lady. Some of the acting works better with the sound turned down, but some is just overwrought, period.**** The Ship from Shanghai (1/31/30) Charles Brabin ~ Louis Wolheim, Kay Johnson, Conrad Nagel, Carmel Myers

Some of the reviewers found it hard to place themselves in a 1930 audience. Remember, studios thought that as much music as possible should be added even to the most stolid plots. The question is, did the film work? I say yes. Conrad Nagle was excellent in playing the worldly, self-absorbed elite. Kay Johnson shows she was one of the best early talking picture leads. But the film belongs to Louis Walheim who has the role of his career. His descent into madness is amazing. The final scenes between him and Johnson squeeze every emotion dry. By today's standards it's over the top but by 1930s standards it has few equals. While the film is not altogether successful, the acting, cinematography and even the early sound demand appreciation.

Written by Hollywood Ten screenwriter John Howard Lawson, this crackles with class resentment. The blasé privileges of wealth: i.e. Going to the office at eleven and working furiously until noon, are thrown into a maelstrom of class war. It starts with the usual, per the period, bunch of night club swells dressed to the nines, blithely decide to take a yachting journey to San Francisco. While they talk about the crew in disparaging terms, the steward seethes at being ordered about, being blamed for their faults, etc. While the rich lounge on deck drinking highball, the crew is restricted to the heat of below decks. A storm, which the rich welcome for a bit of excitement, seriously damages the ship, giving the steward the opportunity to mutiny and take over the ship reversing the situation. Its clear that Lawson was writing a parable of Class War. Its always been my hypothesis that early talkies became unpopular not because of their crudeness because of the early recording equipment, but because the subject matter, mostly 1920s theater, was made instantly passé by the depression. Men in white tie at the country club dance, fluttering flappers trying to decide between one vapid stockbroker or another. These became chokingly irrelevant in the depression. Here this begins in the same way but gets down to the ugly truth quite quickly. That this wasn't popular at the time is obvious. The O'Neill type ending doesn't help. Lawson was to take a lesson from this and spread Communist propaganda in more subtle ways later in his career. He was, however, just as doctrinaire, becoming the head of the Communist Party cell in Hollywood.

1930 was the year that MGM went to all-talkie production and this movie demonstrates their lack of ease with the new medium. In addition they saddled themselves with a lot of sequences shot on the water, always a risky proposition -- although the ship was likely at the docks.Meanwhile this production is afflicted with all the stereotypical problems of early sound productions: a static camera, unnatural-sounding sound with a lot of hiss and badly directed dialogue. Even if you discount these problems, this story of how brutish purser Louis Wollheim seizes control of a yacht after it is wrecked in the storm lacks interesting characters. Each character can be defined in a sentence. The interesting parts of the movie are the sailors trying to deal with the storm as it swamps the yacht; and Kay Johnson checking on the badly injured Conrad Nagel. Those, however, are clearly shot MOS. The rest of the movie makes use of cuts where a moving camera would have been better.MGM clearly figured this movie to be a greater success than it turned out and its failure pretty much ended the career of Kay Johnson and knocked Conrad Nagel out of the leading man category. Louis Wollheim survived and prospered off his next movie, the great ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT. If the MGM brass thought this movie would propel them firmly into the sound era, they were sadly mistaken.