Le Drame de Shanghaï (1938)
Directed by Georg Wilhelm Pabst

Film Review

Le Drame de Shanghaï is one of the last films that the acclaimed Austrian cineaste Georg Wilhelm Pabst made in France, an ambitious mix of film noir, melodrama and reportage set against the backdrop of the Chinese Civil War of the 1930s.   In many of his previous silent films, Pabst had occupied himself with the plight of women in German society, examples of this being The Loves of Jeanne Ney (1927) and Pandora's Box (1929).  His main interest in his adaptation of Oscar Paul Gilbert's popular novel is evidently the central heroine, played by the stunning Austrian actress Christl Mardayn.  Caught in a deadly game of political intrigue, Mardayn's character monopolises our attention throughout the film, and once again Pabst portrays his heroine as the cruel victim of a male dominated world, one, who despite her inner strength and intelligence, is doomed from the moment we first see her.

Christl Mardayn's is not the only remarkable performance the film has to offer.  Louis Jouvet shows up in a surprisingly villainous role, his customary charm almost completely effaced by a nasty sadistic streak that, in one or two notable scenes, chills the blood.  As sinister as Jouvet is, he pales in comparison with the real villain of the piece, a Chinese gangster boss played with cool, understated menace by the esteemed Russian actor Valéry Inkijinoff.   Having made his name in Vsevolod Pudovkin's Storm Over Asia (1928), Inkijinoff ended up being typecast as the villain in many French films of the 1930s, most memorably in Julien Duvivier's La Tête d'un homme (1933).  Another popular actor of the time, Raymond Rouleau lightens thing a little with his portrayal of a self-satisfied journalist who soon gets out of his depth, but he is almost totally eclipsed by the more charismatic villains and spellbinding leading lady.

The film's geo-political context provides more than just a colourful background; it becomes central to the narrative and ultimately takes over, so that the experiences of the main characters in the drama end up seeming totally trivial.  To do justice to its subject, the film needed to have had a much greater budget, but Pabst does a reasonable job of capturing the chaos that is overtaking China with the limited resources at his disposal.  Made almost immediately after the start of the second Sino-Japanese War in 1937, the film was bang up to date and includes recently acquired newsreel footage, something that doubtless enhanced its appeal to western audiences.  Le Drame de Shanghaï doesn't quite live up to the excellence of Pabst's earlier silent masterpieces but with its mesmeric performances and slick mise-en-scène shrouded in an atmosphere of film noir fatalism it is far from disappointing.

Film Synopsis

In the 1930s, China is a country that is descending into anarchy in the midst of an escalating civil war.  The popular leader Cheng is dedicated to uniting his nation, but he has many enemies who are determined that he should fail.  Of these, the most powerful is a crime syndicate known as the Black Serpent, led by the ruthless Lee Pang.  Meanwhile, Kay Murphy, a Russian émigré, enjoys celebrity in a fashionable Shanghai nightclub.  To pay for her daughter Véra's expensive education in Hong Kong, Kay fulfils the occasional errand for the Black Serpent.  It was a former lover of hers, Ivan, who forced her into this nefarious life and now that Ivan is dead Kay believes she can flee the country with her daughter and start a new life in Europe.  Unfortunately, Ivan is far from dead.  Scarred but still very much alive, Ivan promises Kay her freedom if she will undertake one last mission for the Black Serpent: to bring Cheng to him so that Lee Pang can execute him...