Critic Reviews
83
Metascore
Universal Acclaim
positive
15(100%)
mixed
0(0%)
negative
0(0%)
Showing 15 Critic Reviews
100
A mystical and exotic story of love and destruction, a film for which both star and director became legends.
100
Express is 80 tight minutes of railroad intrigue, an Oscar winner for cinematography (there's none better) and the film with the enduring line: "It took more than one man to change my name to Shanghai Lily." [22 Oct 1993, p.3D]
100
Great Hollywood kitsch, supremely visualized by Von Sternberg and cinematographer Lee Garmes. [07 Nov 2003, p.C6]
90
Irresistibly enjoyable.
88
Marlene Dietrich is in full plume in Shanghai Express, literally and figuratively.
80
It is by all odds the best picture Josef von Sternberg has directed.
80
The atmosphere which Director von Sternberg cleverly built up through the slow beginning of the picture and the brilliant photographic effects achieved by his camera man, Lee Garmes, have effect of giving this melodramatic cliché a reality which it could not possibly achieve in a medium less persuasive than the cinema.
80
Intriguing and visually atmospheric melodrama with Dietrich doing her sultry thing.
80
Of all the Josef von Sternberg-Marlene Dietrich films, this Oriental thriller may be the most sinfully pleasurable and amusing. [15 Sep 1991, p.6]
80
Style always outweighed substance in the atmospheric films of Josef von Sternberg, and this 1932 feature is no exception. [26 Nov 1993, p.32]
