"The Lady from Shanghai" is a 1947 film noir by director Orson Welles. The film was famously "butchered" by Colombia Pictures president Harry Cohn, who removed about half of Welles' footage and replaced it with extensive and expensive re-shoots."Shanghai" is narrated by Michael O'Hara (Orson Welles), an Irish sailor who gets swept up in a plot involving crooked lawyers, rich businessmen and sultry femme-fatales (Rita Hayworth). Like most of Welles' film, its aesthetic is busy and bombastic to a fault. Welles assaults us with all manners of trickery, including off-beat camera angles, strange accents, unusual compositions, copious long shots, extreme close ups, grandiose location photography, audacious crane shots, leering shots of Hayworth's bikini-clad body and manic fun house sequences which include a visit to a Hall of Mirrors. Welles so commits to his "throw everything including the kitchen sink" approach, that he even hits us with giant fish, giant octopuses and a courtroom filled with shenanigans too bizarre to describe. There's even an apocalyptic subplot in which characters pontificate the End of the World! As "The Lady from Shanghai" doesn't represent Welles final vision, Welles intentions for the film remain unknown. Some view it as a film about the dissolution of Welles' marriage to Rita Hayworth, whilst others see it as a tale unreliably narrated by a madman. Others view it through a political lens, O'Hara a disillusioned dissident (he fought against General Franco in the Spanish Civil War, whilst the film's chief villain admits to being pro-Franco) and leftist trapped in a landscape of visual distortions and so forever unable to "fit" into the world. This world, he explains, is one of conniving sharks, humans destined to "eat themselves up" via deranged blood-frenzies. However one reads "Shanghai", it offers one of the most baroque and bizarre handlings of familiar noir tropes.7.9/10 – See "Out of the Past" (1947) and "Double Indemnity".

Just about every film buff knows Orson Welles's masterpieces "Citizen Kane" and "Touch of Evil". But lesser known is "The Lady from Shanghai". It is probably safe to call this movie one of the greatest examples of film noir. I interpreted the mirror scene as a metaphor for everything that happens in the movie (showing two of each person implies duplicity). And it goes without saying that Rita Hayworth oozes sensuality as naturally as she breathes.If the movie has any problem, it's Welles's voice. The Irish accent is just not one that most actors know how to impersonate (can't they just cast Irish people in those roles?). But that doesn't weaken the movie at all. The acting, camera work and editing coalesce into one of the greatest pieces of work ever put on screen. It reaffirms Orson Welles as one of the greatest directors ever (maybe THE greatest). I also recommend "The Third Man" (a film noir in which Welles starred but didn't direct).

. . . as he's the miscast "man in the background outside the Cantina" guy, when he SHOULD be playing the part of the foolish sailor, "Michael O'Hara." Unfortunately, THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI suffers from the same flaw that would later hamper the picture ROCKY: Writer's Blockhead. Sylvester Stallone thought just because he wrote the ROCKY story, that somehow entitled him to portray the title boxer character himself. If he could have worked through this hubris, his idea could have become a more successful film starring an accomplished actor as ROCKY, such as Robert De Niro or Bruce Dern. Similarly, Aussie Flynn's Irish brogue surely would have been more convincingly foreign than that of Orson Welles. And since Mr. Welles just has Michael standing by idly during the Shoot-out at the O.K. Funhouse, Errol clearly would have ad-libbed some bit of Swashbucklery to enliven the proceedings. Furthermore, Errol was too much of a gentleman to allow Rita Hayworth's character to die alone (wife or no wife in Real Life). But what else could you expect, knowing how these two blokes met their historical ends? Errol became the actual ROBIN HOOD, leading Castro's boys to Victory in Cuba (and getting bumped off by the CIA Black Ops guys for his success). Welles occasionally waddled on set to make TV ads for some of the products he favored during his fatal case of gluttony. Elvis may have died in his john with a fried peanut butter and banana sandwich at hand, but at least The King wasn't whimpering about some old sled!

If you like your noir with a little Latin beat, this could be right up your alley. The title is a bit of a misnomer though, since 'The Lady', Elsa Bannister (Rita Hayworth) wasn't from Shanghai, she just happened to be there once. If I hadn't heard all the caveats from the reviewer who introduced the picture on Turner Classics, I wouldn't have considered it to be a 'flawed' picture. Apparently producer Harry Cohn who financed the thing had a lot of problems with the finished film, and had Orson Welles re-shoot a lot of the scenes with Hayworth to feature her glamorous side, hence all the steamy close-ups. Welles was married to Hayworth at the time even though the marriage was kaput, so watching both of them get passionate on screen must have been a real exercise in acting effort.You might need to catch the story a couple of times to figure out the murder plot, but it's all spelled out by the principals - Grisby (Glenn Anders) killed Broome (Ted de Corsia) when Broome discovered the plan to kill Arthur Bannister (Everett Sloane) and frame Michael (Welles) for the murder. Elsa (Hayworth) killed Grisby once she knew Michael had written the confession, but that left her husband still alive to represent Michael as the world's greatest criminal attorney. The fun house mirror maze would have worked out fine for Elsa if she and Arthur hadn't shot each other, but I guess you can't have everything.The schlub in the story was Michael, but he knew that all along. He inadvertently managed to follow the premise he offered at the start of the picture - "One who follows his nature keeps his original nature in the end". Apparently so did all the rest, managing to fulfill their nature as sharks, mad with their own blood.