Word: cotten
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...misled by the title of this one. Although advertisements say that "M-G-M presents the mystery of a missing person" there is actually no mystery at all, and everyone is well accounted for. The man with the cloak is Joseph Cotten, a dapper, frustrated poet, who foils a plot on the life and fortune of an old millionaire-actor...
...About Eve and September Affair, sandwiched in between burlesque at the Old Howard, are two excellent revivals. Bette Davis and George Sanders tell about Eve, while Joseph Cotten and Joan Fontaine act out the affair...
Those who want the inside story on Red China may be led astray by the ads for "Peking Express." Most of the "action" in this picture takes place inside a 1910 railroad car that might as well be standing in the Chicago stockyards. Joseph Cotten, cast as a United Nations doctor, wanders aimlessly up and down the aisle accompanied by equally aimless Corinne Calvert. Miss Calvert bites her tongue occasionally to express emotion and indicate that she's still alive...
Eventually we learn that Cotten is on his way to operate on a Nationalist general (Chung), but then he is kidnapped by a bandit general (Wan) and held as hostage for Wan's son (Wang or 'Young Wan'). As an added complication, Mrs. Wan is out to kill her husband in revenge for the murder of another son (Fang). At any point it's impossible to tell the Nationalists from the bandits, or the Fangs from the Yangs; apparently Joseph Cotten can't tell either, for the shoots them all indiscriminately as the picture ends...
...While Cotten busily talks up the virtues of democracy, War Lord Miller stabs his wife, orders his uniformed bandits to stop the train and seize the passengers as hostages, shoots stray characters in the back, tortures the journalist with a hot iron, and earmarks Corinne for what was regarded in some circles, back in the days when this plot was young, as the fate worse than death. In the carnage that rights these wrongs, Peking Express seems to prove only that human life in this type of melodrama is almost as cheap as in China itself...