Erich von Stroheim's stern Prussian persona would seem to make him an unlikely "love interest" to anyone not into S&M but anything goes in Gambling Hell, an Axis-era war movie that couldn't have been made in Hollywood at the time thanks to the restrictive Production Code. The squat 'n stocky, chrome-domed Vonster plays Werner von Krall, a sardonic, self-serving soldier-of-fortune in war-torn Canton who saves Mireille (Mireille Balin), a down-on-her-luck cabaret entertainer, from a firing squad while brokering an arms deal with a Chinese general. Taking a French reporter they fish from the sea along for the ride, the chivalrous but flat-broke Krall and his loose lady yacht to Macao to try and somehow get the weaponry from gun-running gambling czar Ying Tchai (poker faced Sessue Hayakawa), whose teenaged Eurasian daughter, home from boarding school, doesn't know what daddy does for a living. There's trickery, treachery, and dangerous romantic entanglements ahead for the motley crew (some of whom are morally ambiguous but not half bad) before the shady shenanigans end in a couple of conflagrations (one involves Japanese bomber planes) that wipe out most of the cast.
Director Jean Delannoy, "reviled by proponents of the New Wave as the ultimate anti-auteur", isn't at sea in Josef von Sternberg territory and creates, through striking cinematography and some creative sets, a jaded, desperate atmosphere in a nicely realized Orient landscaped with bombed-out ruins and exotic gambling dens. The film has a curious history: it was made in 1939 but wasn't released until 1942 with von Stroheim's (who had become persona non grata in Vichy France) scenes cut out and another actor, Pierre Renoir, inserted. After the war, the film was edited once again and re-released with Erich back in the picture.
In real life, the langourous leading lady, sexy Mireille Balin (here resembling Joan Crawford made up to look like Marlene Dietrich), fell in love with a German Wehrmacht officer and they tried to flee during the Liberation but were captured by the "resistance" enroute to Italy. Balin was beaten, raped, and thrown in prison and her lover killed. Once freed, Mireille was punished for her "crimes" by not being able to work for a year and, her career in shambles, soon drifted into alcoholism. She later suffered from a disfiguring facial disease and eventually had an operation in a comeback attempt but neither were successful and the destitute actress died in obscurity in 1968.
Director Jean Delannoy, "reviled by proponents of the New Wave as the ultimate anti-auteur", isn't at sea in Josef von Sternberg territory and creates, through striking cinematography and some creative sets, a jaded, desperate atmosphere in a nicely realized Orient landscaped with bombed-out ruins and exotic gambling dens. The film has a curious history: it was made in 1939 but wasn't released until 1942 with von Stroheim's (who had become persona non grata in Vichy France) scenes cut out and another actor, Pierre Renoir, inserted. After the war, the film was edited once again and re-released with Erich back in the picture.
In real life, the langourous leading lady, sexy Mireille Balin (here resembling Joan Crawford made up to look like Marlene Dietrich), fell in love with a German Wehrmacht officer and they tried to flee during the Liberation but were captured by the "resistance" enroute to Italy. Balin was beaten, raped, and thrown in prison and her lover killed. Once freed, Mireille was punished for her "crimes" by not being able to work for a year and, her career in shambles, soon drifted into alcoholism. She later suffered from a disfiguring facial disease and eventually had an operation in a comeback attempt but neither were successful and the destitute actress died in obscurity in 1968.