The China Clipper to Shanghai – Storm Over Lisbon, 1944

Posted: December 11th, 2023 | No Comments »

Storm Over Lisbon (1944) is not a great film, but it is perhaps worth an hour and a half of a wet Wednesday afternoon – it’s here on Youtube). It’s one of a number of films that worked the same turf as Casablanca a couple of years previously but with the script, the stars or the magic. Storm Over Lisbon is a rather lacklustre tale of spying in the capital, a rather elaborate casino in Estoril and Americans mixed up in espionage. It does have Erich Von Stroheim, who was always keen to make anti-Nazi movies (though this is technically about Japanese spies in Portugal), but not much else. The director, George Sherman, was more about quantity than quality, Richard Arlen’s glory days were fifteen years behind him, Robert Livingtston does a sort of sub-par Cary Grant jolity and Vera Ralston (a Czech figure skater that moved to Hollywood) never quite managed the glamour of a Garbo or a Dietrich.

Still, there is an interesting sub plot that involves Shanghai. Everyone is chasing the Richard Arlen character who has been in China and then a Japanese POW camp in Burma. He’s escaped with some film that’s very important (a Hitchcockian MacGuffin). Throughout his time in pre-war Shanghai is referenced, indicating he is an exciting man of adventure. His friend, played by Livingston, is a clipper pilot, the Pan Am long-range flying boat. Now he’s piloting the lifeline from Lisbon to New York, via Bermuda. But previously he flew the New York-Shanghai route (which was advertised and trialed but never really got going). A nice nod to a now lost charmign form of travel and the notion of Shanghai prefiguring Lisbon as a nest of spies….

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