The Shanghai Gesture is a 1941 American film noir directed by Josef von Sternberg and starring Gene Tierney, Walter Huston, Victor Mature, and Ona Munson.

It is based on a Broadway play of the same name by John Colton, which was adapted for the screen by Sternberg and produced by Arnold Pressburger for United Artists.

[3] Gigolo "Doctor" Omar bribes the Shanghai police not to jail the broke American showgirl Dixie Pomeroy; he invites her to seek a job at the casino owned by Dragon-lady "Mother" Gin Sling, his boss.

In the casino, Omar attracts the attention of a beautiful, privileged young woman, fresh from a European finishing school.

Gin Sling is confident that she can thwart this threat to her livelihood, and orders her minions to find out everything they can about the man behind it, Englishman Sir Guy Charteris, a wealthy entrepreneur who has purchased a large area of Shanghai that contains her gambling parlor.

Though the spoiled woman is openly contemptuous of the casino's owner, Gin Sling allows her credit to cover her ever-growing losses.

There were several attempts to turn the play into a film in the 1930s, one of them by Cecil B. DeMille, and another in the early 1930s by Edward Small at United Artists.

Among the changes made to appease the censor was the replacement of the Japanese character of Prince Oshima with Dr Omar to avoid depicting miscegenation.

It also contained the superlative talents of Walter Huston, Albert Bassermann and Ona Munson.”[8] Variety described it as "a rather dull and hazy drama of the Orient.

What remains from all the cuts is the surreal baroque setting--a gesture to the descent of mankind into the bowels of the earth--a casino designed like Dante's Inferno.

Despite the forced changes, this is still a delirious masterpiece of decadence and sexual depravity that surrounds itself with Eastern motifs that are meant to mystify rather than enlighten.