Shanghai Express is an amazing film in many regards, although, perhaps not acting and/or realism. It is noticeably uneven, but hard to dismiss. Because Marlene Dietrich has a light and weary smile, and the director, Josef von Sternberg, has an eye for scene composition. It is beautiful, but frustrating, because it is exactly like watching a good friend wreck herself over a man who isn’t worth her attention. The man who left her and she never stopped loving.

Dietrich plays Magdalen (what other name could she have, really?), alias Shanghai Lily, a “coaster”- a woman of easy virtue who makes her living moving up and down the coast of China (in this case, traveling by train from Peking to Shanghai). A trade, of course, she only took to when she was abandoned by her fiance and forced to fend for herself. On this day, she is traveling, one must point out, during a inauspicious moment, while there is a rebellion going on. Among the other passengers, there is another woman of infamous means with whom Lily strikes up a cordial friendship, an older woman who values her correctness and her dog above everything, a gambler, an invalid, a man of mystery, a missionary, and… a doctor, who is not only a doctor but an officer in the British army who just happens to be the fiance that abandoned Lily all those years ago. He is not happy to see her, and becomes increasingly less happy when he works out that the Shanghai Lily everyone is talking about is his long lost Magdalen.

Initially there is a lot of speculation about the two women, but soon there are larger problems. The train is seized by rebels and one of the passengers is chosen to be held hostage, to be traded with the Chinese government for a rebel that had been captured the day before. If you guessed the doctor is the final choice, well, of course he is; although his history with Lily and his terrible temper make things worse for him than they’d be otherwise. And then Lily has to do whatever is necessary to secure his freedom. And she is misjudged, of course, by everyone in the train along the way (except, naturally, her colleague), although the one person who was the most outraged about her traveling with them is suddenly convinced that he should defend her. Will the lovers be reunited? Will they be reconciled if they are?

Okay, the plot is melodramatic, and her lover, played by Clive Brook, may be handsome, but comes off kind of harsh and wooden. But what is wonderful, the scenes where smoke is caressing her lovely face; her willingness to calmly sacrifice herself and pretend she doesn’t give a damn about him; Anna May Wong as her friend of convenience, who is just as cool in a crisis; a perfect shot of a man being murdered as the rebels capture the train; her chiding her ex-fiance about trusting her, and continuing to lie to him… Your appreciation of this movie, I’m afraid, will be entirely dependent on your appreciation of Marlene Dietrich. I admit, I’m completely charmed.