83
Metascore
15 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 100TV Guide MagazineTV Guide MagazineA mystical and exotic story of love and destruction, a film for which both star and director became legends.
- 88LarsenOnFilmJosh LarsenLarsenOnFilmJosh LarsenMarlene Dietrich is in full plume in Shanghai Express, literally and figuratively.
- It is by all odds the best picture Josef von Sternberg has directed.
- 80The atmosphere which Director von Sternberg cleverly built up through the slow beginning of the picture and the brilliant photographic effects achieved by his camera man, Lee Garmes, have effect of giving this melodramatic cliché a reality which it could not possibly achieve in a medium less persuasive than the cinema.
- 80EmpireDavid ParkinsonEmpireDavid ParkinsonIntriguing and visually atmospheric melodrama with Dietrich doing her sultry thing.
- 80Los Angeles TimesJohn AndersonLos Angeles TimesJohn AndersonOf all the Josef von Sternberg-Marlene Dietrich films, this Oriental thriller may be the most sinfully pleasurable and amusing. [15 Sep 1991, p.6]
- 75Chicago ReaderDave KehrChicago ReaderDave KehrMore action oriented than the other Dietrich-Sternberg films, this 1932 production is nevertheless one of the most elegantly styled.
- 70Time OutTime OutVon Sternberg, who was forever looking for new kinds of stylisation, said that he intended everything in Shanghai Express to have the rhythm of a train. He clearly meant it: the bizarre stop-go cadences of the dialogue delivery are the most blatantly non-naturalistic element, but the overall design and dramatic pacing are equally extraordinary.
- This melodrama the director weakens by mistaking postponement of event for suspense. But the film has compensating strength in the star, who photographs more beautifully than before and, though she is acted off the screen by Anna May Wong, shows herself unique in Hollywood by being majestically beautiful.
- 70Josef von Sternberg, the director, has made this effort interesting through a definite command of the lens. As to plot structure and dialog, Shanghai Express runs much too close to old meller and serial themes to command real attention. The finished product is an example of what can be done with a personality and photogenic face such as Marlene Dietrich possesses to circumvent a trashy story.