Why this was an interesting film. **SPOILERS**

Its an interesting film. Joan Barry was great in it. I agree. Some of the shots Hitchcock did with her was really interesting. I think the difficult with this film was that this film was made when there was no post production. This was a major difficulty.

One flaw was the casting of Henry Kendall. He was good. But it should have been somebody who is much more likeable. Someone like Ivor Novello, Malcolm Keen or even Esmond Knight.

There are lots of Hitchcock humor in it. I like the umbrella scenes in the beginning.

I have just seen this film and fell in love with Joan Barry.

I had never seen or heard of her before, but thought she was a stunning beauty. Wow! Right up there with Leigh, Taylor and Garbo for screen-queen beauties.

The acting was very good overall considering the time period of early talkies.

Though slow at some points, this film appears quite under-rated here on the IMDB.

7/10

* Spoilers *

I've thought, a couple of times after viewing it, that this film was almost like a dream that Hitchcock wanted to capture onscreen. There is such an odd logic to it; the audience in drawn into the story and certain events just...happen, unquestioned. The couple gain wealth, book a trip, meet some odd characters who display head-scratching behaviors that serve no other purpose than to infuse the film with quirk and eccentricity. For example; they meet a princess, onboard, randomly. She strikes-up conversation, offers friendship to the husband, without hesitation, and this seems believable. A ship is sinking and noone seems particularily distressed about it.

The camera lingers, uncomfortably, over characters as they display inaccurate facial cues for whatever it is they're vocally expressing. The light on the wife and "princess" makes them both look abstract, hazy, dreamlike, with only their eyes in full focus - like an advertisement or painting. This is amongst many other things. But overall, the film is fascinatingly odd. All the quirks and strange logic combined, really do evoke a dream, where you feel a suspenseful sense of unease (you know something is strange about this dream world, but can't quite define what it is) but this unease is not necessarily fear. It's an odd place to be, where characters embark on difficult to justify "adventures" that have no meaningful purpose or clear outcomes. The relationships between characters are ambiguous, with people behaving strangely against their social roles, without any protest from those around them. Hitchcock really captured the essence of dreaming, here, I think and "Rich and Strange"/"East of Shanghai" is perfectly in-tune with other suspenseful, provocative and experimental work of the era, like "Vampyr" and "Anna Christie". It's an odd, but very interesting little movie. There's something almost opiate about it, in nature, which puts the title "East of Shanghai" - combined with the time period and the prospect of new found wealth - into perspective. Definitely worth seeing.