While Public Enemy, Frankenstein, and Dracula pushed film towards the escapist end of the spectrum, Shanghai Express continued the 1920's silent era tradition of stark, brutal storytelling. However, that effort is thoroughly distilled by the use of sound and the celebrity of Marlene Dietrich. We see a foreigner played by a white man with this strange attitude of the time that was coming out of the boldness of the 1920’s and into the sugar coated fake reality of the 30’s where audiences needed to have their moral lessons diluted in some level of fakery and entertainment. These sort of harsh storylines dealing with women being abused sexually and emotionally, raw violence and the suffering of man however were part of pre-code 1930’s Hollywood still. Filmmakers were clearly still trying to express stories of true human suffering for audiences to learn from. These sort of hard hitting stories would slowly disappear throughout the 30’s as the Hays Code sets in. So while this film attempts to be a true, realistic movie it is still exhibiting traits of an escapist film, i.e. the use of lavish, clearly fake sets, stories set in far off lands in un-relatable times, the use of Celebrities with recognizable voices that allowed American audiences to relive their stresses through the time in the theater rather than become more stressed out by the storyline of the film and what it says about humans in general.