Von Sternberg

Talk Like a Train

Talk Like a Train —sleep, death, desire Close round one instant in one floating flower. —Hart Crane, Voyages HAD VON STERNBERG MADE only Shanghai Express, his position in the pantheon of filmmakers would be secure. Few films of any era are so integrated in décor and performance. Not until Stanley Kubrick would one get the sense of an inspired visual intelligence brought to bear on every image, every frame. Each element in Shanghai Express is subordinated to the intensification of “spiritual power.” The flimsy plot, the measured delivery of its minimal dialogue, the larger-than-life characters, the stylized China in which the action takes place—all recall opera more than film. If (as Woodrow Wilson may—or may not—have said) The Birth of a Nation is “history seen by flashes of lighting,” then Shanghai Express is passion lit by arc light—one definition of pure cinema. “A single page by Harry Hervey” is credited as the source. Hervey, a Texan who spent his life knocking about Asia producing sensational novels such as King Cobra, The Devil Dancer, and The Black Parrot, was offhand about the incident that inspired him. “The Chinese revolution was in full swing and my train was held up by revolutionists, a common occurrence at that time,” he said. “By adding a few characters and embellishing the drama . . . I had the story.” Jules Furthman fleshed it out, creating a screenplay that resembled an opera libretto, existing mainly 142 Talk Like a Train 143 as a pretext for the arias. Ex-lovers, an English doctor and a courtesan of unknown origin (conceivably Russian), meet on a Chinese train that is halted by a warlord. He holds the doctor hostage in exchange for his own lieutenant, a prisoner. Once his man is returned, the general threatens to send the doctor back alive but blind. The courtesan prays for his safety, showing that she still loves him. Fortuitously, the warlord is killed and the lovers escape, to be reunited as the train reaches its destination. To accommodate the fantasy, von Sternberg constructed what he called “a China built of papier-mache.” He filled it with a thousand Asians, all speaking Cantonese; few of the waiters and domestics recruited as extras spoke the correct language, Mandarin. The Santa Fe Railroad closed off the San Bernardino and Chatsworth stations and rented him a train. Its carriages were painted, to his specifications (and sometimes by himself, physically), with Chinese characters and camou flage patterns. Miles of trackside country were scoured of every unChinese sign, building, or feature in preparation for a running battle between two trains that was never filmed. Even John Grierson, who despised Hollywood glamour, couldn’t restrain his admiration. “Its photography is astonishing; its sets are expensive, and detailed to an ingenious and extravagant degree; its technique in dissolve and continuity is unique. The film might be seen for its good looks alone.”1 German critic Rudolf Arnheim, who scorned the story, also surrendered to its visual extravagance. “Once again we experience a primitive plot being used as an opportunity to create an enchanted sea of light, a supernatural magic world. We think we are seeing not likenesses of real objects but a painter’s fantasies of blackness and lightness all run together. Shadows hang over the figures, over the locomotive; Marlene Dietrich’s face is crosshatched by a black veil, and when the machine takes on water at the station, the mysterious black pipe between the clouds of steam resembles a ghost.” The film’s structure rests on its design, executed by Hans Dreier and two of von Sternberg’s protégés, Peter Ballbusch and Richard Kollorsz . Façades were hung with banners or decorated with ideographs, and sets of towns and stations were built so close to the line that in rehearsals, the locomotive tore them down. The credits, which include Von Sternberg 144 a huge gong being struck, smoke wreathing over lilies and dragons, and a hand brushing calligraphy on a page, alert us that décor bears vitally on the action and the characters. The most effort, however, went into Dietrich’s appearance, starting with the hat, garnished with curved black plumes, she wears when boarding the train. Despite claims by both, neither Dietrich nor studio costumer Travis Banton created the hats. Like Dietrich’s veiled cloche in Morocco, they were the uncredited work of John Harburger...