Austin Film Society presents Precode Treasures: Shanghai Express
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Photo courtesy of Austin Film Society
The director-star tandem of Josef von Sternberg and Marlene Dietrich created a cinematic magic that other teams could only hope to achieve. When her extravagant cheekbones, polymorphous perversity, and deadpan delivery met his gauzy, feathered, and frankly kitschy mise-en-scene, the viewer sees into a kind of dream world of the cinema. Here, Dietrich plays a famous Courtesan, traveling on a cross-continental Chinese railroad line, who becomes involved in an intrigue with a British doctor.
