The Lady from Shanghai

Director: Orson Welles

Overview

The Lady From Shanghai, a complex, involving puzzle-within-a-puzzle mystery story, is a showcase for Orson Welles, showing his singular talents and sensibilities as few other films have. The story is superficially simple: a seaman Michael O'Hara (Welles) is hired as a crew member on the yacht of the wealthy Banister (Everett Sloane). His beautiful but mysterious wife Elsa (Rita Hayworth) has met O'Hara earlier, when he saved her from a mugging. What ensues is a complicated and bizarre pattern of deception, fraud and murder, with O'Hara finding himself implicated in a murder, despite his innocence. The film is best remembered for its final sequence when the plot comes to a literally smashing climax in the famous "hall of mirrors" sequence, with Elsa and Banister shooting it out amidst shards of shattering glass. Orson Welles, who produced, directed, wrote and starred in the film, is sometimes self-indulgent in his use of visual tricks and techniques, which at times sacrifice plot for visual brilliance, but he pulls it together in the end to produce a stunning, difficult film. Rita Hayworth gives one of her best performances as the deceptive, seductive temptress, hard-edged and cynical. The film confounds, unsettles and disorients the viewer, very much as Welles intended to do. While not an easy film, it is well worth the attention required to follow it, and Welles offers no easy solutions or any false happy endings to his tour-de-force mystery.

Product Details

Release Date:	01/31/2023
UPC:	0738329261115
Original Release:	1948
Rating:	NR
Source:	Kl Studio Classics
Sales rank:	1,937

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Rita Hayworth	Elsa "Rosalie" Bannister
Orson Welles	Michael O'Hara
Everett Sloane	Arthur Bannister
Ted de Corsia	Sidney Broome
Glenn Anders	George Grisby
Gus Schilling	Goldie
Erskine Sanford	Judge
Carl Frank	District Attorney
Lou Merrill	Jake
Evelyn Ellis	Bessie
Harry Shannon	Cab Driver
Sam Nelson	Yacht Captain
Eddie Coke	Policeman
Robert Gray	Actor
Joe Palma	Cab Driver
Richard Wilson	District Attorney's Assistant
Billy Louie	Chinese Girl
George "Shorty" Chirello	Actor
Vernon Cansino	People
Artarne Wong	Ticket Taker
Wong Show Chong	Li
Tiny Jones	Woman
Edythe Elliott	Old Lady
Peter Cusanelli	Bartender
Joseph Granby	Police Lieutenant
Al Eben	Policeman
Norman Thomson	Policeman
Edward Peil	Guard
Harry Strang	Policeman
Gerald Pierce	Waiter
Maynard Holmes	Truck Driver
Jack Baxley	Guard
Dorothy Vaughan	Old Woman
Steve Benton	Policeman
Milt Kibbee	Policeman
Philip Van Zandt	Policeman
William Alland	Reporter
Alvin Hammer	Reporter
Mary Newton	Reporter
Byron Kane	Reporter
Charles Meakin	Jury Foreman
Jessie Arnold	Schoolteacher
Mabel Smaney	People
Joe Recht	Garage Attendant
Jean Wong	Ticket Seller
Grace Lem	Chinese Woman
Philip Morris	Port Steward
John Elliott	Clerk

Technical Credits

Orson Welles

Orson Welles	Director,Producer,Screenwriter
Lawrence W. Butler	Special Effects
Clay Campbell	Makeup
Sturges Carne	Art Director
William Castle	Associate Producer
Harry Cohn	Producer
Lodge Cunningham	Sound/Sound Designer
Stephen Goosson	Art Director
Viola Lawrence	Editor
Charles Lawton	Cinematographer
Jean Louis	Costumes/Costume Designer
Wilbur Menefee	Set Decoration/Design
Sam Nelson	Asst. Director
Heinz Roemheld	Score Composer
Robert J. Schiffer	Makeup
Herman Schoenbrun	Set Decoration/Design
Morris W. Stoloff	Musical Direction/Supervision
Richard Wilson	Associate Producer

Editorial Reviews

Disorienting and dislocating, 1948's kaleidoscopic noir masterpiece The Lady from Shanghai marked another artistic triumph and commercial failure for master filmmaker Orson Welles. It also chronicled the disintegration of his short-lived marriage to screen siren Rita Hayworth -- playing at times like an abstract commentary on their turbulent private life. Against his better judgment, the surprisingly sophisticated sailor Michael O'Hara (Orson Welles) takes a job on the luxury yacht of alluring Elsa Bannister (Rita Hayworth), landing himself in the middle of murder. The Lady from Shanghai has an all-but-nonsensical plot and a distant, nightmarish quality, generated partly by the tension between the meticulously photographed images shot on location and a soundtrack Welles obviously reconstructed in the studio. Ultimately, it's difficult to know whether to believe anything that happens: Perhaps it was all just a nightmare; some perverse fantasy of masculine paranoia climaxing in the oft-imitated hall of mirrors sequence. However one reads the film, it stands today as one of a privileged handful of Welles' finest efforts.

Barnes & Noble - Amy Robinson

This story about murder and betrayal becomes murky long before its conclusion, but Orson Welles's quintessential film noir is about moral chaos, and Welles's stunning visuals speak for themselves. Shot in sharp black-and white, the story of innocent narrator Michael O'Hara's twisted journey into the netherworld is told through deep shadows, skewed compositions, and unsettling close-ups. Enchancing the surreally ominous atmosphere is the choice of settings, such as the San Francisco Aquarium love scene, in which the convoluted tale reaches its appropriate climax in an abandoned fun house that embodies O'Hara's nightmarish confusion. Finding the perfect image for shattered relationships and fractured personalities, Welles's famous final shootout takes place in the fun house's hall of mirrors, as O'Hara learns the truth in a place that trades on deception. Judging the narrative too Byzantine for his taste, Columbia chief Harry Cohn demanded that Lady from Shanghai be reedited, redubbed, and rescored before it was released. It still failed at the box office, rendering Welles a Hollywood outcast for almost a decade.

All Movie Guide - Lucia Bozzola