Pola Negri carries the weight in Der Weg nach Shanghai

Is this for you?

If you have a soft spot for silent-era melodrama or just want to see Pola Negri work her magic, this is worth your time. It’s a bit of a slow burn, though. If you need constant plot progression or get bored when characters spend a long time just looking out of windows, you’ll probably find this one a bit of a slog.

Honestly, the whole thing feels like a fever dream of exile. It spans from the Russian Revolution all the way to 1930, but it doesn't really care about the politics as much as the internal ache of losing people.

Pola Negri is the center of gravity here. Every time the camera finds her face, she’s doing all this heavy lifting with just her eyes. It reminded me a bit of the mood in The Haunted Castle, where the atmosphere feels more important than the actual script.

The Rhythm of Wandering

The movie doesn't rush. It spends a lot of time on the *feeling* of being lost. There are these long sequences where she’s just moving through crowded stations or desolate streets. It’s almost like the movie forgot it had a plot for a few minutes, which I kind of liked.

The search for the daughter is the hook, but the real meat is the exhaustion of the character. You can see it in her shoulders. It’s not a flashy performance.

There is this one scene near a train platform—I can't even remember if it’s supposed to be a major beat—but the way the shadows hit the station wall is just… strange. It’s beautiful, but it feels like the director was more interested in the light than the actual goodbye.

Small Things

• The costumes have this specific, dusty look to them. You can almost smell the old wool.
• Some of the extras in the background look like they’re having a completely different movie. There’s one guy in a hat who just stands there for an eternity.
• The pacing dips right in the middle. It really drags.
• Pola Negri’s reaction to the final reunion is surprisingly muted. I expected a big explosion of emotion, but she just… sighs? It worked for me.

It’s not perfect. The transitions between the revolution years and the later scenes are a bit bumpy, almost like they chopped some footage out to make it shorter. But who cares? It has this weird, melancholy charm that stays with you after the screen goes black.

It feels like a relic. A messy, slightly disjointed, but very human relic. I think I liked it more because it didn't try to explain everything.