The White Countess, directed by James Ivory, an obvious clone of the classic film Casablanca (1942), is set in Shanghai during 1936-1937. (There are also similarities with the 1993 film The Remains of the Day, both crafted by director Ivory from a story by Kazuo Ishiguro.) Due to tragic events before 1936, Todd Jackson (played by Ralph Fiennes in the Humphrey Bogart role) is blind. A onetime distinguished diplomat, he is now a cynical proprietor of a nightclub named the White Countess, which provides entertainment, liquor, and pretty women. Instead of sentimental music from a piano, however, there are singers and dancers. The most beautiful woman, Jackson's white countess, is Sofia Belinsky (played by Natasha Richardson in the Ingrid Bergman role), a Russian princess exiled due to the Soviet revolution. Mr. Matsuda (played by Hiroyuki Sanada standing in for Major Strasser),whom filmviewers are told was Japan's advance man for the Manchurian invasion of 1931, is now in Shanghai. Various news clippings on the screen about Japanese aggressive moves corroborate the prediction of another American diplomat that Japan is poised to take over Shanghai any day. (Alas, there is no Claude Rains to walk a tightrope and articulate epigrams.) Matsuda, who befriends Jackson, offers one day to bring more business to the White Countess, including Communist Chinese and Nationalist Chinese, and others, so that he can experience the joy of bringing politically opposed groups into a zone of neutrality inside the nightclub. Meanwhile, the Belinsky family (which includes Lynn and Vanessa Redgrave) is trying to secure papers to leave the tensions of Shanghai for British Hongkong, where they have friends. Sofia attracts the amorous attention of Jackson, and vice versa, because they have one thing in common: They are despised for their current means of livelihood by their peers--Jackson by his former diplomat colleagues, Sofia by her family. One day, Sofia hints to Jackson that she needs $300 for an undisclosed purpose, though he knows what she is up to. Regretting that she will leave his employ and no longer serve as his favored taxi dancer and interlocutor, he provides the funds. However, the Belinsky family has decided to leave town without her, taking along her daughter Katya (played by Madeleine Daly); they believe that when her current role as a prostitute will becomes known in gossipy Hongkong their chances for a smooth resettlement will evaporate. Everything comes to a head when the Japanese army enters Shanghai on August 14, 1937. The Russian family, including Katya but excluding Sofia, heads for a boat, as do many others. When Sofia learns that her family has gone through with their plan, she is frantic. A Jewish merchant, Samuel (Alan Corduner), who presumably had left Nazi Germany only a few years earlier, offers to take mother and daughter along that night on a ship bound for Macao, so he urges Sofia to retrieve Katya before she departs. Jackson, now aware that his chance for marital bliss may soon be leaving his life, tries to track her down so that he can make a marriage proposal. What has been a noir film throughout then promises to end on a melancholic note, similar to the last few frames of Casablanca. But there the similarity ends. MH
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