Anna May Wong – Christian Sauvé

Hollywood Party (1937)

ByChristian Sauvé 2019-10-092023-03-19 Movie Review

(On Cable TV, October 2019) Closer to a technical demonstration than a real movie, the 1937 version of Hollywood Party (there’s a far better known 1934 Hollywood Party featuring Laurel and Hardy) is dull, infuriating, intriguing and charming at once. Plot-wise, it’s nothing more than an east-Asia themed variety show, with more stereotypical, fake accents and cultural appropriation costuming (Charley Chase doing a lame Charlie Chan impersonation … ugh) than modern audiences can tolerate. But here’s the thing: It’s filmed in bright Technicolor, generally set outside, and features a number of moderately well-known actors of the time. Modern audiences will be captivated by a far too-short appearance by the legendary Anna May Wong showing off a few wardrobe pieces, and exasperated by lame comic sketches. The song and dances are an often-uncomfortable mix of adequate and overdone (a white man playing an accordion while dressed in Chinese robes is … special), not wowing anyone compared to the best standards of the time but coming across as an amiable short film. Still, it’s the bright colours and sometimes-daring cinematography (through the use of Venetian blinds) that holds our attention today despite the often-dodgy content. A curio more than an essential viewing, Hollywood Party disappeared from public viewing for sixty years until it was rediscovered in an archive in 2000, and even despite the outdated stereotypes it’s good to have this historical document with us still.

Movie Review

Shanghai Express (1932)

ByChristian Sauvé 2018-07-092021-08-25 Movie Review

(On Cable TV, July 2018) There’s a remarkable amount of exoticism on display in Shanghai Express, which follows a few characters are they board a train from Pekin to Shanghai and get caught up in the Chinese civil war. Trains are good for taking characters a long way while remaining in manageable locations, and so the movie does feel far more expansive than its limited sets suggest. (Although there is one notable outdoors sequence showing the train leaving Pekin.) Notably helmed by Josef von Sternberg before the Hays Code crackdown began, Shanghai Express features a courtesan as heroine, opium dealing, forced sex, civil war dealings and one big murder. Marlene Dietrich is spectacular as the morally compromised “Shanghai Lily”, with a then-rare leading role for Asian-American performer Anna May Wong. While the first half of the film is a bit melodramatic and seems content to see its ensemble cast just chat away, the film gets far more interesting as a thriller once the train is stopped by government forces and the characters are kicked out of their comfortable berths. Great cinematography helps propel a morally ambiguous subject matter that still feels decently modern. It wraps up satisfyingly, which is true for the film as a whole: Made in 1932 but almost just as interesting today, Shanghai Express is a welcome reminder that the basics of cinema were all understood even as early as the early thirties.