Shanghai Express’s whitewash casting sits uncomfortably, but its shifts between elegance, suspense and brutality reveal the hand of a master melodramatist.
Shanghai Express’s whitewash casting sits uncomfortably, but its shifts between elegance, suspense and brutality reveal the hand of a master melodramatist. Lee Garmes’ Oscar-winning monochrome photography, Travis Banton’s ethereal costumes and Richard Kollorsz’s extraordinary train interiors combine to create a milieu that’s both exotically escapist and unsettlingly real.