The Ship from Shanghai (1930)

Such a frustrating disappointment

Simply A Masterpiece

Did you people see the same film I saw?

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

I guess I am in the minority. I thoroughly enjoyed the movie, an early look at mutiny and class disparity. I disagree with other reviewers, in that I didn't find myself sympathetic to either side. I also disagree that somehow the movie takes a turn toward the rich side of the argument. I find both sides were equally abominable even and up until the end. It is a very interesting look at an issue that is very poignant even in 1930.The rich are still feeling their superiority and the workers are merely asking for their equal treatment. The workers are asking for respect, to not be called "beast" and "monster". The rich do not seem to understand that even at the end. It's unfortunate that many people cannot see that this is all that they want. Both sides are equally duplicitous through the entire movie.

The Ship from Shanghai (1930)** (out of 4) Squeaky, early talkie from MGM has a bunch of rich, spoiled people (including Conrad Nagel and Kay Johnson) out on a yacht when the crew, led by Louis Wolheim, decide to overtake it and have some fun on their own. THE SHIP FROM SHAGHAI has three familiar faces but sadly the end result is pretty lame and it's "C" level production makes you feel as if you're watching a poverty row studio instead of someone like MGM. What's interesting about this film is that it seems to have a message to get across but sadly the characters are just so deadly dull that it never really happens. I'm sure there's a message saying that the rich shouldn't be snobs and I'm sure the writers enjoyed having these poor crew members seek revenge but to me there was just a bunch of stereotypes and very little else. There's a romance involving Nagel and Johnson that never goes anywhere and the amount of screen time devoted to it is just weak. There are a lot of scenes with Wolheim sounding off about a variety of issues but it adds up to nothing. In fact, I'm really not sure what's up with Wolheim's performance but it's certainly a strange one. At times he appears to be acting drunk while at other times he comes across mentally slow. I'm not sure what they were trying to do with his character but it never really worked. Fans of the stars might want to check this out just to see them in early roles but sadly the film really doesn't do much but thankfully it only lasts 67-minutes.

1930 was the year that MGM went to all-talkie production and this movie demonstrates their lack of ease with the new medium. In addition they saddled themselves with a lot of sequences shot on the water, always a risky proposition -- although the ship was likely at the docks.Meanwhile this production is afflicted with all the stereotypical problems of early sound productions: a static camera, unnatural-sounding sound with a lot of hiss and badly directed dialogue. Even if you discount these problems, this story of how brutish purser Louis Wollheim seizes control of a yacht after it is wrecked in the storm lacks interesting characters. Each character can be defined in a sentence. The interesting parts of the movie are the sailors trying to deal with the storm as it swamps the yacht; and Kay Johnson checking on the badly injured Conrad Nagel. Those, however, are clearly shot MOS. The rest of the movie makes use of cuts where a moving camera would have been better.MGM clearly figured this movie to be a greater success than it turned out and its failure pretty much ended the career of Kay Johnson and knocked Conrad Nagel out of the leading man category. Louis Wollheim survived and prospered off his next movie, the great ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT. If the MGM brass thought this movie would propel them firmly into the sound era, they were sadly mistaken.

Early talkie could have been good but the hideous performance of Louis Wolheim and bad direction kill this effort despite some good work by Kay Johnson, Zeffie Tilbury, and Carmel Myers. Even Conrad Nagel is not all that bad, but the endless monologues of Wolheim kill any tempo this film might have had plus he's just plain bad. This is one of several talkie flops that ruined Nagel's starring career; this is also Myers' first major talkie. Too bad. She was interesting. Johnson has a couple of dynamite scene, and Tilbury (famous as the grandmother in The Grapes of Wrath a decade later) is awfully good as Lady Daley. Holmes Herbert, Jack MacDonald, and Ivan Linow co-star.