Shanghai Gesture, The (1941) Rating: Starring: Albert Bassermann, Phyllis Brooks, Walter Huston, Victor Mature, Ona Munson, Gene Tierney Director: Joseph von Sternberger Category: Drama Studio: Image Ent. Subtitles: [None] Length: 94 mins Want to buy?           Lured into a world of vice… there was no turning back! The Shanghai Gesture, the last great film of master director Josef von Sternberg (The Blue Angel, Blonde Venus, The Devil Is A Woman), “luxuriates in a corruption and degradation that rivals Blue Velvet in its suggestiveness” (V magazine). The nightmarish, stylized environment that Sternberg creates in this 1941 classic set the standard for the film noir vision. In Shanghai’s slimy underworld, English financier Sir Guy Charteris (Walter Huston) tries to close a gambling den, owned by the devious Mother Gin Sling (Ona Munson). However, Gin Sling learns that Charteris’s daughter, Poppy (Gene Tierney), is a regular at her establishment and with the help of the coldly seductive Dr. Omar (Victor Mature), she lures Poppy into gambling and drug addictions. Gin Sling blackmails Charteris and reveals a shocking secret, plunging them to another level of hell. Based on a racy 1925 Broadway play by John Colton, The Shanghai Gesture received 32 rejections from the Hays censorship office before it was finally released. The Chinese government objected to the film’s depiction of China as immoral and attempted to suppress it. Despite the opposition, The Shanghai Gesture brilliantly evokes the foreboding, poisonous noir underworld and stands out among Sternberg’s best work.