Jean Delannoy’s Macao, L’enfer de jeu – A Tale of Two Movies about Macao

Posted: October 20th, 2014 | No Comments »

Many people may be familiar with the 1952 Josef von Sternberg/Robert Mitchum film Macao, but an earlier French film, Macao – L’enfer du jeu (Gambling Hell in English) is an interesting movie for a number of reasons. Jean Delannoy began shooting the movie in 1939 before the fall of France but, with Paris occupied by the Nazis, he had to stop filming. The movie was an adaptation of Maurice Dekobra’s 1938 best selling book of the same title. The film is set in Macao and attempts (on French film sets) to recreate the casinos of the island (quite well) and the louche mix of gamblers, adventurers, gun runners and dope smugglers.

However, two versions of the film exist – the first, pre-war version, starred Erich Von Stroheim. However, he was an outspoken opponent of Nazism and the scenes in which he appeared were redacted during the Occupation, and reshot with the actor Pierre Renoir (son of the painter, older brother of the film director, both called Jean) instead of Von Stroheim. Parisian starlet of the day Mireille Balin was the lead actress and Sessue Hayakawa the lead Asian actor (he was born in Japan though worked all over Europe and America, was trapped in France by the Nazi invasion and survived by selling watercolours and joining the French Resistance) in the film (doomed to death of course, but a major part). The Renoir version was released in France in 1942 during the occupation and then, in 1945, the original Von Stroheim version was released eventually. It’s really rather good….

Balin and Von Stroheim

Balin and Renoir

Balin all alone

Hayakawa as Ying Tchai in a dapper white suit looking over the balcony of a Macao casino

The casino itself with the ubiquitous roulette wheels and baskets to move money and chips up and down between the croupiers and punters, an accurate feature of Macao casinos of the time, now sadly replaced by Vegas style glitzy nonsense

Hiyakawa has a smoke

Hiyakawa burns the casino shortly before killing himself

 

 

Film poster highlighting Hiyakawa

Film poster with Von Stroheim – the almost kiss pictured between Balin and Hiyakawa would have been unimaginable on an American film poster of the time

 

Film poster with Renoir – during the war guns and bombers were stronger motifs than afterwards – note the junks and non-military motifs on the poster above issued in 1945

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