The Shanghai Gesture has been called "a delirious melodrama of decadence and     sexual guilt that uses its Oriental motifs as a cipher for all that is unknown   and unknowable. The battle is waged between a Western hypocrite (Walter          Huston) and an Eastern pleasure-queen (Ona Munson); the erotic skirmishes      occur between the self-willed but helpless heroine (Gene Tierney) and the      apathetic object of her passion (Victor Mature, amazing `Doctor of Nothing,'   poet of Shanghai and Gomorrha); the chief arena is a casino built like a         circle of hell, where nothing is left to chance. Subversive cinema at its most sublime" (Tony Rayns, London Time Out).                                  Josef von Sternberg---USA---1941---97 mins.