Director and two actresses all at their pinnacle

This 1932 classic has three distinctions. It’s Marlene Dietrich’s best film. It’s Anna May Wong’s best film. And it’s director Josef von Sternberg’s best film. So it’s a three-for-one.

Dietrich plays a notorious lady who boards a train for Shanghai, sharing her compartment with an equally notorious woman, played by Wong. But there’s a civil war going on, so nothing goes as planned. Dietrich, at the height of her beauty, is at her most ironic and world-weary, and though Wong, who headlined other movies, is in a supporting role, she is so strong and memorable in this that her performance must go down as her screen pinnacle. It was a pinnacle for von Sternberg as well. This was the artistic and commercial height of his collaboration with Dietrich.

Criterion Collection