User Reviews

Fact: although the movie was to be released in 1939,it was postponed to 1942.WW2 had broken out and all Stroheim's scenes were remade with Pierre Renoir instead of the Austrian actor/director.After the liberation,the original version was shown in the theaters.

Jean Delannoy ,although always put down by the nouvelle vague,is a good director ,whose best works were made in the fifties though(notably his two Maigret)."Macao" ,IMHO,is not Delannoy at his best.One can feel a lot of influences ; Marcel Carné's "Jenny" :in that work,Françoise Rosay did not want her daughter to know about her job ( go-between);in Delannoy's work ,Ying-Tchai (Hayakawa) does not want his daughter Jasmine (Louise Carletti)to discover he's involved in dealings and the owner of a dive (which recalls "Forfaiture" ,also featuring the Japanese thespian);Von Sternberg's extravaganzas such as "Shanghai express" .

Roland Toutain is miscast as the young romantic lead.The plot remains a bit confused and ,except in the last pictures ,Delannoy's perfect style cannot make up for it:it would have taken more madness:only the last sequence,where Hayakawa outdoes himself reaches a peak of tragic grandeur.But weren't it for that only,"Macao" would remain watchable.Besides,Mireille Balin's character is modern ,a femme fatale with a down-to-earth side.

A thoroughly entertaining film by Jean Delannoy. A load of nonsense of course but hugely enjoyable. Nicolas Hayer contributes marvellous cinematography and Georges Auric his customary excellent score. Leading players are Sessue Hayakawa, whom David Lean thought 'mad' when directing him in 'Bridge on the River Kwai', Erich von Stroheim whose iron fist in the velvet glove and very 'precise' French accent are always fascinating and the fabulous Mireille Balin. The only weak link is Roland Toutain who although personable and athletic, seems to 'miss it' somehow. He was okay in 'La Regle du Jeu' but if you can't be good in a film directed by Renoir when can you be? I have never seen the version with Renoir's brother Pierre as Werner von Krall (has anyone?) but I am sure he brought his own distinctive seediness to the role. Mireille Balin as we know paid a terrible price for her crime of 'horizontal collaboration' during the German occupation. When released from prison she made one more film with the rather unfortunate title of 'The Last Ride'(!) and disappeared into obscurity. What a dreadful waste. Whilst not a classic this film is extremely sylish and well-paced with a tremendous finale.

When "Macao" was made, the movies where discovering Asia, and China in particular, as a source of preposterous, richly decorated melodrama - "The Blue Express" from Russia, "The Bitter Tea of General Yen, The Shanghai Express" and "The General Died at Dawn" from the U.S. and Items like "Drame de Shanghai" and "La Bataille" from France. This is one of the most stylish and enjoyable and, if they could have come up with a more satisfying finish, it would have been in there with the best. An English dubbed version re-cutting it so that all ends happily didn't help.

Von Stroheim's cropped headed, white uniformed, officer type is the hero for once, battling Hayakawa's sinister oriental casino magnate. The opening where the Von rescues itinerant entertainer Balin from a Chinese firing squad and finds a her glamorous evening dress, that's just her size, in his yacht's sail locker is to be treasured.

Director Delannoy went on to do the Michele Morgan "Pastoral Symphony" and was one of the pillars of French film for decades and that haunting score is by Auric who did the films of Jean Cocteau. These are heavy weights, who aren't normally associated with stories about European adventuresses offering their beautiful white bodies to lecherous Asians to save their gun runner lovers - nothing P.C. here. The colorful support and jokey gambling hell detail, along with some marvelous images (the body floating among the bank notes.) combine to shows that they could make escapist hooey with the best.

The film craft is beyond reproach.

Around the same time von Sternberg was making The Shanghai Gesture, Delannoy was making Macao – enfer de jeu (gambler's hell). The two bear more than a passing resemblance, Orientalist concoctions where central ruthless characters are tasked by affection for their only children and a gambling hall predominates. At the highs in this movie, Delannoy outdoes von Sternberg at his own game, particularly with the ludicrous arrival of Mireille (played by Mireille Balin), so erotic, and world-sure. However, there's something of the Rubens where the master paints the face and hands, leaving the rest down to his studio. Delannoy's heart definitely wasn't in the action scenes, and he's palpably unable to create suspense or a lurid atmosphere. Roland Toutain (journalist Pierre Milley) looks positively bored at one point when he hides behind a door, bottle raised to strike. For all that, the film is glorious.

There's a sort of devil-may-care attitude from the main characters where they treat death as if he were a very impudent child. The chaste central love story between Erich von Stroheim's adventurer, and Mireille, decades his junior, adventurer in her own way, manages to pull my heart strings. There's a sensitivity in Erich von Stroheim's face that prickles my skin, Mireille is no less convincing. It was mentioned to me once that great actors are the ones who carry on acting even when it's not their line, reacting to the dialogue of the others. Mireille Balin manages a rare look, she listens as if she cares what she's hearing. In a jaded world, where it appears people succumb only to charm rather than sensitivity and enthusiasm, I found it quite affecting. There's a visible pang when she's watches him lose at baccarat. It's a bad era to be a man I think, and it's nice to see someone care about a man's misfortune.

There's a little flurry of contrasts in one segment of the film, where Delannoy ticks some production box about creating the degenerate atmosphere, two examples are Ying Tchaï staring lovingly at a portrait of his daughter whilst ordering the sinking of fishing vessels that haven't paid their protection money, and Almaido (Henri Guisol) telling those fresh off the boat that Macao is a city of joy, whilst kicking a vagrant out of his way. To me this came off as more a general existential commentary, rather than an evocation of a fleshpot. There's so much sunlight in the film, and the casino is positively airy, nothing like the termite mound of The Shanghai Gesture.

There's quite a few moments in Macao that will haunt me forever, the introduction of Mireille, and when she's taking off quite the most magnificent dress I've ever seen, to a similarly magnificent Georges Auric score. Just those two on there own and von Stroheim's sublime acting make it eternal (Sessue Hayakawa plays a blinder as well, but is upstaged), his line, "I'm less lucky than you, I've always been my only friend." heartbreaking. I couldn't care less that Delannoy basically gave a two-fingered salute to the script idea and makes something a good deal more sensitive. It's why I've renamed the film in my review title, Macao – graveyard of hearts.

As a footnote, Delannoy was high up on the hit-list of the New Wave critics, and his war-time film l'Eternel Retour, filmed under the Occupation was described with much innuendo as, "a pleasure for the Nazis". Because of this he remains a director unfairly overlooked.