The Lady from Shanghai

I thought that a film starring Orson Wells and Rita Hayworth would have to be enjoyable. The first half was good and from there on the plot got so convuluted that I couldn't follow it and eventually lost interest. It's still interesting to see the great Orson Welles--he is a fascinating actor. And Rita Hayworth was one of the most gorgeous and glamourous actresses of her time, if not all time. Still one needs a little more to make a good film. Many folks are so impressed by Welles' reputation that they are prepared to like anything he did. And if you weren't sure, then there's an extra where Peter Bogdonavich tells you how great it was!

For me, it failed to hold my interest to the end. If the plot had been cleaned up a bit, I might have stuck with it.

One interesting thing to me was that, although the Hayworth character was named "Elsa", the Welles' character preferrd to call her "Rosalie." This reminded me of "Rosebud" in Citizen Kane. Perhpas Welles had some secret fondness/obsession with roses...?

Far too many of Welles's later films are called masterpieces now. Back when I was a young MFA candidate, there were scores of articles written about how Welles had declined after Kane. Then he died. Suddenly all those wretched pictures became masterpieces.

The camera work in this film is striking at times. But as a story, this film is incomprehensible and impossible to follow. As is the case so often after Kane, Welles is so impressed with himself that he dazzles us with irrelevance; even after they cut almost an hour out of this, much of the dialogue is puzzling. It doesn't help the story. And the film is dramatically uneven: Loud and forceful must be balanced with soft and neutral or the entirety is just noise. This film, like almost all the post-Kane films, is mostly just pointless roaring. Welles's Irish brogue is equally unconvincing, but that isn't the worst thing in this film.

Welles's screen writing is almost always subpar. He was never capable of writing something that advanced from scene to scene logically and with the proper pacing. This film, like The Trial and Touch of Evil (ugh!) has long scenes with lots of bewildering dialogue that doesn't inform us or work to the advantage of the storytelling. His later movies fail largely due to this flaw: the storytelling is downright bad. (Citizen Kane disguises this shortcoming to some degree because the story is told in flashbacks).

Another reason Citizen Kane worked was because Welles was willing to work with other people and let them contribute. This film is a good example of how Welles tried to do everything, and he didn't do everything nearly well enough, and the film falls apart. Another big reason why Welles never made another good film after Kane is because he was a royal pain in the neck to work with. He was abusive, critical, overbearing, and generally just enormously difficult as well. It's a miracle he was hired so often as an actor, it really is.

We all - myself included - want Orson Welles to have been a great director. We want all of his later work to be as good as Kane. We want to think of him in later years as the jolly, bearded sage of American cinema. But we're deluding ourselves - the work badly fails, and he is found wanting. After Kane, Welles continually tried to get back to who he once was, and couldn't. He eventually alienated so many people that he became a carnival sideshow, doing all manner of tawdry commercials he could do to finance his later films. All of which, regrettably, are either poor or unfinished.

Good Art has to work; it has to hold together, and has to accomplish what it attempts. Welles's later work does none of that - it fails miserably. Watching The Trial and Touch of Evil and this film and calling them good pictures is the equivalent of contemplating your navel I'm afraid... As one film professor said to me once, Welles's later films are "all over the place."

Welles was bold, had courage, was a maverick, and believed to his death that he put forth a unique and skillful vision. But all that isn't enough, the art still has to work. You can have all those qualities and never again make another picture worth a damn.

"The Lady from Shanghai" (1948) flaunts its cinematic iconoclasm from beginning to end. Defying Hollywood tradition, director-star Orson Welles creates a nightmarish charade. Since Orson's Irish sailor remains as unconvincing as Rita Hayworth's femme fatale, "The Lady from Shanghai" can be viewed as a distorted, fun-house parody of classic film noir. Modern-day critics who bemoan the confused plotting and bizarre motivations never acknowledge the stream-of-consciousness framework established by Welles' tongue-in-cheek narration. There is a method to this chaos. Marked by abrupt shifts in tone and locale, the film becomes a never-ending series of jolts - culminating in the legendary "hall of mirrors" shootout. Despite studio interference, the wildly uneven "Lady from Shanghai" is delirious Wellesian bravura with an undercurrent of paranoia and despair.

Betrayed by the woman he loved
or just played for an all around fool by everybody;
the able bodied seaman played by Orson Welles
sets up several triple cross movies of the future.
The resulting plot is a no win psychological thriller
that delivers bad guy after bad guy until
the worm at the middle of the apple is revealed.
I liked it, but being used to this kind of plot
with Bogart movies of the 40's and early 50's,
the result wasn't as crushing this time around,
but this is a very good and well crafted movie.

I am always looking for a good San Francisco story (I watch and review San Francisco detective/noir movies), so was curious about The Lady from Shanghai. Yes, it has beautiful views of post-WWII San Francisco and even better views of Rita Hayworth, but the story itself is unsatisfying, maybe because so much of it ended up on the cutting-room floor but also perhaps because it's hard to understand the how the protagonist, Michael O'Hara, could be such a moron. Rita Hayworth could probably convince most straight men to do crazy things, but to agree to help someone fake his own death? When the alleged purpose of this fakery is so that the dead guy can collect his own life insurance? Shouldn't even the most hormone-distracted guy have seen that there might be more to this story and smelled a rat?

Still, the setup of a shark tank of nefarious characters is excellent. The unfaithful wife, the rich and brilliant but also old and crippled husband, and the resentful but dependent business partner are all beautifully drawn and sharply observed. Secrecy and duplicity are built into the characters, which serves the atmosphere of the film very well. All of this, however, raises expectations for some sort of clever dénouement (a fancy way of saying "tying up the loose ends and providing a satisfactory resolution") that just does not happen. Were this movie being made today, one might suspect that The Lady from Shanghai: The Sequel was being readied for a 2010 Memorial Day weekend release.