Most critics like it, and the praise settles in two places: von Sternberg’s direction and Dietrich. The reviews return again and again to the look of the film, the smoke and feathers and calligraphy of the train, the deliberate stylisation, the rhythm that mimics the journey itself. Dietrich’s Shanghai Lily is called languorous, charismatic and unapologetic, and several critics note that she photographs better here than in the earlier collaborations. A few also credit the screenplay’s gallery of passengers and the twists along the route.
The reservations cluster on the story. Variety, writing at the time, finds the plot and dialogue too close to old serial melodrama and the performances unremarkable, with Dietrich’s part barely letting her move. The Guardian finds the suspense built on delay and little emotional weight beneath it. Clive Brook is described as stiff more than once. The spread is wide, from warm contemporary notices to outright dismissal, and the harshest verdict is the earliest.