During the Taiping Rebellion of the mid-19th century, anti-Qing (Manchu) Chinese forces led by Taiping commander Li Xiucheng march on Shanghai. Although the Western powers are officially neutral, the British consul in Shanghai sides with the Qing imperial government, and counter to his own government's policy he retains American adventurer Frederick Townsend Ward to raise a mercenary force of foreigners in Shanghai and oppose the Taipings. Ward's force is routed, with heavy casualties, but since many of the casualties are British, the British army soon is drawn in on the side of the Qings. The only support for the Chinese comes from Japanese in Shanghai and anti-imperialist demonstrations in Japan. A family drama plays out against this historical background. After a Chinese home is destroyed by careless British shelling, killing the father and crippling a daughter, the surviving son vows revenge but begins to see that his true friends may be the Japanese.
Nathan Algren is an American hired to instruct the Japanese army in the ways of modern warfare, which finds him learning to respect the samurai and the honorable principles that rule them.
Down-on-his-luck veteran Tsugumo Hanshirō enters the courtyard of the prosperous House of Iyi. Unemployed, and with no family, he hopes to find a place to commit seppuku—and a worthy second to deliver the coup de grâce in his suicide ritual.
The life, adventures and exploits of warlord Date Masamune the One-eyed Dragon: his early youth as an aggressive warrior, the battles he won until subduing almost all his enemies, the lonely comprehension of knowing that he actually can not take over the whole country because he was born too late.
Kondo Isami, the “Devil” commander of the Shinsengumi was one of Japan’s greatest national heroes and a peerless swordsman who devoted his life to protecting the shogun and fighting on the side of the Tokugawa.
Akira Kurosawa's lauded feudal epic presents the tale of a petty thief who is recruited to impersonate Shingen, an aging warlord, in order to avoid attacks by competing clans.
A group of travelers is stranded in a small country inn when the river floods during heavy rains. As the bad weather continues, tensions rise amongst the trapped travelers.
In 16th century Japan, peasants Genjuro and Tobei sell their earthenware pots to a group of soldiers in a nearby village, in defiance of a local sage's warning against seeking to profit from warfare.
Seibei Iguchi leads a difficult life as a low ranking samurai at the turn of the nineteenth century. A widower with a meager income, Seibei struggles to take care of his two daughters and senile mother.
Afro Samurai avenged his father and found a life of peace. But the legendary master is forced back into the game by a beautiful and deadly woman from his past.
In an Edo-period retelling of "City Lights", Iyami, a poor beggar, befriends a flower-selling blind young girl.
Alternative movies trailers for Signal Fires of Shanghai
More movie trailers, teasers, and clips from Signal Fires of Shanghai:
Signal Fires of Shanghai (1944) Comedic Language Barrier
From the 1944 film Signal Fires of Shanghai this clip combines the two halves of a humorous exchange between the Japanese delegation to Shanghai and their ...
Popular movie trailers from 1944
These some of the most viewed trailers for movies released in 1944:
Dan Stanton and Condon are foreclosing on a group of ranchers in order to gain a land-monopoly. They have one of the ranchers, whose property supplies the others with water, killed.
Muggs and Glimpy, two East Side Kids in the army, return to their neighborhood, supposedly on furlough; actually, Muggs has been honorably discharged with a physical defect, but he tells no one of this.
With a plot line mostly lifted from 1941's "White Eagle", Columbia's 24th serial (following "The Desert Hawk-1944" and ahead of 1945's "Brenda Starr, Reporter"), "Black Arrow" finds carpet-baggers Jake Jackson and Buck Sherman arriving in Blue Mesa in search of gold.
Social Democratic election film. Young Lasse is unemployed and drawn to the Communists. However, he comes to the Social Democratic fold after heroically capturing a saboteur.
Having been falsely court marshaled for cowardice and sentenced to prison by the Army, Jed Kilton escapes and heads to Nevada Springs to see his kid brother.
The capture of Naples, the first great European city to be liberated, revealed the magnitude of the tasks involved in re-creating the means of livelihood and the machinery of government in a devastated, starving and disease-ridden city.
This one finds Jack Slade and Mary Conway,alias Blanche, being recognized as known and wanted crooks by deputy marshal Harry Stevens and, when he orders them out of town, Slade kills him.
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