"You're in China, sir, where time and life have no meaning". Thus speaks the Eurasian warlord in the impossibly glamorous "Shanghai Express" (1932), as a cow halts the locomotive on its winding journey out of a Peking of hissing pistons, darting shadows, shouts and whistles. The film is shrouded in smoke: smoke from the train and, of course, smoke-as-sex from Marlene Dietrich as she announces "It took more than one man to change my name to Shanghai Lily". This is smoking at its most glamorous and dangerous: everything imbued with meaning: the ceremony of lighting up, (whilst holding her ex-lover's gaze, locked in deadly irony), the slow pensive drawing in of smoke, and finally a long exhalation followed by an accusatory silence. Then, Dietrich, all stylish furs and fluttering black feathers, performs a half turn and,
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