She is from Shanghai the way that J. G. Ballard was from Shanghai. Actually, there's this whole pre-midcentury thing about single white women who have lived in Asia (and aren't missionaries): they're bold and urban and stylish and vaguely disreputable -- on the nightclub-singer-to-whore scale of reputability, plus bonus colonial/racist implications -- and can speak "exotic" languages.
Brigid O'Shaughnessy in The Maltese Falcon (1941) has come to California via Asia as well. The female sidekick from Indiana Jones #2? Her. There's a whole noir movie that treats in that sex/colonial cathexys, called Macao (which Robert Mitchum consistently pronounces "ma-KY-yo"), which my grandfather remembered fondly from his young adulthood, and then saw again in his 70s (with me) and pronounced it ridiculous. Mostly I think because the movie makes no sense, but also because its attitudes are so shitty.
All of which is to say, actually, that unlike other Hollywood movies that refer to Asia of this era, The Lady from Shanghai features a chase sequence that stumbles into the real Chinatown of San Francisco, and into a theatre showing Real Chinese Actors performing a Chinese drama, in Chinese. The camera just stumbles past gawkily for a minute or two, but it was certainly neat to see it.
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Brigid O'Shaughnessy in The Maltese Falcon (1941) has come to California via Asia as well. The female sidekick from Indiana Jones #2? Her. There's a whole noir movie that treats in that sex/colonial cathexys, called Macao (which Robert Mitchum consistently pronounces "ma-KY-yo"), which my grandfather remembered fondly from his young adulthood, and then saw again in his 70s (with me) and pronounced it ridiculous. Mostly I think because the movie makes no sense, but also because its attitudes are so shitty.
All of which is to say, actually, that unlike other Hollywood movies that refer to Asia of this era, The Lady from Shanghai features a chase sequence that stumbles into the real Chinatown of San Francisco, and into a theatre showing Real Chinese Actors performing a Chinese drama, in Chinese. The camera just stumbles past gawkily for a minute or two, but it was certainly neat to see it.