The Lady from Shanghai (1948)

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

It is popular to either praise this film to the heavens or to dismiss much of it as style over substance, depending on whether you think Welles was a genius or not.I think you should watch the film and make your own mind up. It seems to me that the end result is a bit of curate's egg, i.e. it is good in parts. Perhaps this is symptomatic of how things were for Welles at the time; his marriage to Hayworth was in the process of disintegration, and his professional life was chaotic; the aims of the studio were very different from Welles, and they had control over the finished item. His rough cut was shortened by an hour, and a lot of what was left was supplemented with expensive and time-consuming reshoots, and edited to barely resemble the original. The music was also changed, much to Welles' chagrin. The result was that the film was delayed by a year and went over budget; by the time of release, Welles' relationship with both Hollywood and Hayworth were each well and truly over. The plot is convoluted, confusing, and in some parts nonsensical. Whether it would have been much different in the original cut is open to debate, but I doubt it. It is nearly always interesting to watch; the camerawork, the acting, Hayworth's beauty, the location shooting are all very engaging. By contrast Welles' Irish accent is more than a bit dodgy and the film has clearly suffered in the edit.This is an interesting film, certainly, but as it stands a brilliant one, probably not. Not as bad as the knockers would make out, but not as good as some reckon, either.I enjoyed it, but as with most of Orson Welles' films, one is left wondering what might have been, under other circumstances.

A poetic drifter saves a beautiful woman from a random mugging, then accepts her husband's offer of work on a yachting holiday, only to find himself ensnared in a murder plot ...Highly contrived story that never gets into a groove, although it does develop a chaotic energy. Right from the start you sense the writer/director struggled to get things rolling, with hopelessly implausible plot points and lots of dead-end dialogue. But just as I was losing the will to continue, a courtroom scene pulled me back in with some truly engaging charm and idiosyncrasy, followed by an interesting hall-of-mirrors climax.So lots of weaknesses, but ... there is one outstanding element that makes this movie great: Rita Hayworth's close-ups. The most beautiful, fascinating face ever seen on a movie screen. Ever.The music is fine, not overly dramatic. The photography has some brilliant touches, with good use of angles and lighting.Overall: an oddly laboured effort, elevated by a unique actress.

Despite watching this movie several dozen times, I still don't quite understand the plot. Nevertheless, it doesn't take away from the many pleasures of this unusual film. It may be disjointed, but it's never dull. For me, it's a visual feast. The camera-work alone, much like "Citizen Kane," is vastly innovative. How fascinating to watch the aquarium scene with its magnified fish overpowering the conversation. Rita Hayworth looks beautiful - lovingly photographed, often in closeup, with her then-controversial short blonde haircut. I chuckle when she's chasing after Orson Welles in Chinatown and suddenly starts speaking Chinese with the locals! Or entering a room in silhouette, like a spider woman, after Broome is shot. The justly-famous ending in the Hall of Mirrors remains one of the most vivid sequences in film history. Credit goes to Welles for once again pushing the envelope and coming up with something unique and daring.

Dave Kehr calls this film a true 'film noir comedy'. It seems to me that this perspective manifests in the way that the universe of The Lady from Shanghai continually and incessantly laughs at Michael O'Hara's misfortune and helplessness. Certainly Welles has obliged stylistically - his strange, morphed compositions increasingly begin to collapse around O'Hara as he is drawn slowly into the mystery of the murder conspiracy. The blocked paths of the actors criss-crossed and circle each other venomously as the aquarium creatures loom large in the background. The narrator seemingly jumps readily inside his own story as the voice-over switches seamlessly into dialogue. And then there is that famous climax in the house of mirrors where all sense of direction and orientation is abandoned for our characters - each shot and each shattering of glass further distorts the space (although the lost footage is apparently much longer and grander). In some instances the cosmic farce is literal in its humour - as the hobbling Bannister ends up on the stand interrogating himself in the trial that is little more than a slapstick affair. But for all the effort in maintaining this pervasive aura of paranoia and disorientation by ramping up the convention stylistic tones of noir the film falls a little flat. The murder plot itself, which is meant to be increasing hard to follow until that final reveal, is secondary to Welles' atmosphere, so what we have is a distancing effect due to his own plodding, almost bored narration guiding us along. What is supposed to be irregular and affecting merely highlights its own flaws - the clumsy ADR dubbing which does the dialogue no favours, the oddly stilted romance that doesn't quite lure us into a false sense of security (perhaps a casualty of the director and starlet's impending divorce), awkward little zooms and smash cuts that merely draw attention to themselves rather than establish a tone. I would so very much like to see this lost artefact.