In the perspective of the almost nine decades elapsed since its filming and launching, ‘Rich and Strange‘ (the English title) a.k.a. ‘East of Shanghai‘ (the American title) is an atypical film in Alfred Hitchcock‘s career. It is one of his few films in which the thriller element is secondary, the production belonging rather to the genre of romantic intrigue in combination with the exotic-orientalist travel movies. But if we look closely at the film in the context of the period in which it was realized, we understand that we deal with the quests of a young and talented director who was exploring different cinematic genres, who inventing in the film studios, and who was living together with the entire cinema industry of those times the transition from the silent to the spoken movies.
We deal with the story of an English couple, probably typical of the 1930s, he is a clerk, she is a housewife, their marriage is under pressure because of the everyday routine. The news of receiving a money gift (kind of an early inheritance) that will allow them to make a dream journey to the Far East comes just in time to trigger their voyage on the luxury cruise ship where much of the action takes place. The marital problems are now transferred to the high seas and their relationship will be put to the test as each of them will have the opportunity of extra-conjugal adventures. It’s the screening of a novel, the genre of intrigue that has been and will be the subject of countless romantic movies, some better and some worse. The approach is light and feminist, with most comic arrows targeting men. It can not be said that Hitchcock revolutionizes or makes a significant contribution to this type of movies.
What’s left of this movie for the 2019 viewers? Several scenes anticipate the master of cinematic rhythm and visual effects that will become Hitchcock. I refer in particular to the scene that opens the film, created in the studio, a sort of office version of Chaplin‘s classical assembly line scene in ‘Modern Times‘. The film also has a much higher dose of humor than many other Hitchcock films. There is also an effect due to the transition from silent to spoken films, which at the time may have been considered a flaw, but which nowadays gets an interesting aesthetic dimension. The script seems to have been written for a silent film, in many scenes the dialogues are minimized or missing, and the scenes are separated by titles like in the silent movies. The result is interesting. On the other hand, the soundtrack has many of the problems of the beginning of the spoken films, including bizarre shrill voices of actresses. The makeup and mimics of the actors are exaggerated, also largely belonging to the silent film. ‘East of Shanghai‘ is a film signed by Alfred Hitchcock that belongs to the period before the director became the Hitchcock we love because he thrills us.