Shanghai Express

Abstract

The chapter focuses on Shanghai Express (1932) and analyzes its handling of the themes of prostitution, faith, and appearance. Sternberg’s film turns on the demand of Shanghai Lily (Dietrich) to be trusted without supporting evidence and shifts the object of faith from that which lies behind appearances to appearance itself. A redefinition of spectacle follows from this: it is not a mere given of the senses but involves a comportment and agency on the spectator’s part. Playing with the appearance of prostitution, the film toys with the moral guidelines of the Production Code. The chapter argues that it thereby not only sees how far it can go, but it also makes a philosophical question out of appearance itself, examining how the trust in love differs from knowledge. The make-believe and Orientalism of its reconstructed China are of a piece with its problematization of the difference between appearance and reality.