NOTE: The below Blu-ray captures were taken directly from the Blu-ray disc.

ADDITION: Kino Blu-ray (November 2022): Kino have transferred William Dieterle's Peking Express to Blu-ray. It is cited as being from a "Remastered in HD by Paramount Pictures – From a 4K Scan of the 35mm Camera Fine Grain". Aside from a few speckles it looks quite strong - solid contrast layering and mild textures, detail in close-ups and a few sequences of murky stock footage.

NOTE: We have added 44 more large resolution Blu-ray captures (in lossless PNG format) for DVDBeaver Patrons HERE

On their Blu-ray, Kino use a DTS-HD Master / linear PCM mono track (16-bit) in the original English language. Peking Express has few aggressive moments that come through with modest depth and score by, former child prodigy, Dimitri Tiomkin (Shadow of a Doubt, The Men, A Bullet Is Waiting , Night Passage, High Noon, Angel Face, Strangers on a Train, The Men, Dial M For Murder, Spawn of the North, Jungle Queen, The Thing From Another World etc. etc.) sounding pleasing supportive in the lossless transfer. Kino offer optional English subtitles on their Region 'A' Blu-ray.

The Kino Blu-ray offers a new commentary by film historian Eddy Von Mueller. He discusses this as the third iteration of the story, preceded by Josef von Sternberg’s Shanghai Express and Ralph Murphy's 1943 Night Plane from Chungking. He talks about how a World War and Civil War reshaped China, how this is set in the People's Republic of China - only a few years old in 1951, Hollywood attitudes toward Chinese, actress Soo Yong (she acted in twenty-three Hollywood films), the new institutions of the UN and WHO, how a character actor, Joseph Cotten, became a sizable star, the class structure shown in the film - noble peasants etc. how Peking Express has the trappings of film noir, although it is more a war time tale than pulpy dark cinema. It was excellent and I really appreciated it as there is so little written about this film. There are also six trailers although none for Peking Express.

William Dieterle's Peking Express is almost completely set on the titular train. It's political castigating the Chinese communists with party loyalist 'Wong' played by Benson Fong having straining but casual debates with Cotten's Michael Bachlin - the calm American easily ending the discussions with apt logic citing 'freedom'. The film deals with the internal conflict in China with 'resistance' battling 'treachery'. I appreciated some of the lighting on the train - cinematographer Charles Lang had a varied career with some Noir pedigree shooting Ace in the Hole, Sudden Fear, The Big Heat etc. I had never seen Peking Express and am pleased with the Kino Blu-ray - notably the informative commentary. A shade flag-waving but I can watch Joseph Cotten in just about anything. There are interesting facets that give the film value.

Gary Tooze