THE GENERAL DIED AT DAWN (1936)

If Hitchcock rather than Josef van Sternberg had directed the Marlene Dietrich melodrama SHANGHAI EXPRESS, this might have been the result. There is a lot of attention to camerawork, shadows, and close-ups of faces in the directing style of Lewis Milestone, but there is also a Hitchcockian atmosphere (as in THE LADY VANISHES and THE 39 STEPS) in the tale of a man and woman falling in love as they get in and out of spy troubles. Gary Cooper is an American mercenary in China who is trying to help Mr. Wu (Dudley Digges) buy weapons to give to a peasant army to fight heinous warlord Yang (Akim Tamiroff). Cooper takes a train to Shanghai with a belt full of money intended for Digges, but sickly American Porter Hall and his lovely daughter, the incongruously British Madeleine Carroll (a Hitchcock heroine in 39 STEPS), working for Tamiroff, betray Cooper. Hall goes to Shanghai with the money to complete a deal for Tamiroff with drunken arms dealer William Frawley but Cooper manages to throw some monkey wrenches into the warlord's plans, sometimes with and sometimes without the help of Carroll. The narrative is plot-heavy, and some loopholes emerge (Did Cooper and Carroll know each other before their China days? Why did Tamiroff send the clearly ineffective Hall to finish the financial transaction for the weapons?), but the twists and turns keep things moving quickly to a very atmospheric finale involving a scene of mass suicide, quite explicit for a 30's Code movie.

There is much romance and humor amongst the spy-thriller trappings. Cooper and Carroll make a great couple; he was at the height of his comeliness and we get to see him bare-chested, displaying his lithe physique, twice (Carroll remains fully clothed, though her close-ups are fetching). Tamiroff got an Oscar nomination and he is good at giving a new twist to the Hollywood stereotype of the inscrutable and sinister Oriental. Whenever he appears, he always makes a grand entrance, with his own little musical theme bursting out of the soundtrack--this becomes a nice bit of black comedy as the movie goes along. Korean-American actor Philip Ahn, known much later as Master Kan in the TV show "Kung Fu," shows up in a small role as Tamiroff's second-in-command. Hall, usually known for his comic portrayals of cowards or bureaucrats, stands out in this more serious part. Frawley, who will always be first and foremost Fred Mertz, is practically a revelation as the constantly drunken "ugly American," always seeming on the verge of passing out as he sings, "I'll be glad when you're dead, you rascal you" to no one in particular; at first, he seems just a comic relief character, but he plays a crucial and violent role in the climax. Irish character actor J.M. Kerrigan has a nice turn as an amoral agent whose loyalty seems to be constantly shifting--his ultimate reward is quite satisfying. Also in the film are Leonid Kinskey (CASABLANCA'S bartender) and writer John O'Hara in what I assume is an in-joke cameo as an opportunistic reporter. A fun movie, which has been rendered excellently on DVD in Universal's wonderful Gary Cooper collection (5 great films, none previously available on DVD) on 2 discs for a very reasonable price. [DVD]