To see Mariene Dietrich is an emotional and aesthetic experience. To see her in the fabulous modernism of the new Paramount Theatre adds further color to that experience. Only a picture of the forcefulness of Shanghai Express could tear one away from the exotic pastime of watching full-blown colonial maidens, done in the style of Louis XVI, cavorting in modernistic panels under the influence of subdued lighting effects. Paramount has again attempted to be all things to all men and has again succeeded in its own fashion.

Against this background of decorative chaos, Shanghai Express is refreshingly vital. The story is simple and somewhat absurd. It is the tale of a cosmopolitan group thrown together on the long run from Peiping to Shanghai and of their evolution as individuals under the stress and strain of revolutionary China. To know the plot is not necessary for the appreciation of the picture, as the dramatic importance lies entirely in the development of the characters.

Marlene, exquisitely sensuous in her black-plumed sophistication, plays Shanghai Lily to the distraction of every male. Particularly furious is the storm roused in the brave English breast of her old love, Captain Harvey, played by Clive Brook, surgeon in the service of Her Majesty. The action revolves around this pair, together with the machinations of the somewhat too facile and too evil Mr. Chang, who is none other than the inevitable Warner Oland, again gone Oriental. Shanghai Lily demands the faith of Harvey and the picture ends as she is getting it in such a fashion as to leave little doubt of its genuineness.

The direction of Von Sternberg is as usual obvious because of its elusiveness. His China is unbelievably like the China we had always hoped to see; and once we have watched the Express crawl between the overhanging rafters of an ancient city, chasing foolish chickens before, it is difficult to accept a more prosaic film. To have seen Shanghai Lily looking like a caged imperial tiger as her black gown swirls about her is to have seen a figure that spoils one for lesser women.