The Lady from Shanghai
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Movie Reviews of The Lady from Shanghai
Movie Review: Watch out for those sharks!
Summary: 5 Stars
I had seen this film a couple of times and never really warmed up to it, but I thought I'd give the DVD a try. After 3 viewings I think I finally got it. Sure, a lot of it is implausible and weird--but if you can willingly suspend your disbelief you are in for a rich noir ride. The writing is superb, the locations are exotic and evocative, and this baby is dark and cynical to its core! Rita Hayworth proves herself an excellent actress--to balance all of the flesh Welles so lovingly displays of his soon ex-to-be. Why Welles had to saddle himself with the accent is truly beyond me, and I felt it didn't work that well--although it didn't ruin the picture. All the supporting players are evil and sweaty, especially Everett Sloan as the crippled cuckold. I think that crippling is the central metaphor in the film, but more so emotional crippling. All of these people are just twisted and broken inside, and they can't even begin to understand love, loyalty, and compassion. Visually this is portrayed by the funhouse mirror scene, an obvious reference to their narcissism and inability to connect to others as they really are. Well, enough psychobabble. The DVD has some nice extras and we learn a lot about the history and making of the film. Bogdanovitch does a commentary that is rich in many ways, but has two central problems: it is not linked to what is happening on the screen, and it becomes very repetitive at a certain point. This is a gripe I have with a lot of commentary tracks--someone turns on a mic and the subject blabs on without really talking directly about the great stuff happening RIGHT NOW in the movie. The best tracks are very focused on the film, and they integrate all of their information into it. For some great tracks, I recommend Ebert's Citizen Kane, Camille Paglia on Basic Instinct, and the track for the Criterion Notorious. Anyway, Lady from Shanghai is a seminal noir that is visually and thematically satisfying. Give my love to the sunrise!Movie Review: "Would you like a good paste in the eye, sir?"
Summary: 5 Stars
No, not Welles' best film. It couldn't be, since "The Lady From Shanghai" was actually a chance for Welles to get back in good with the studio system, a.k.a. the money picture that gets made when they won't let you be an artist. (Too, he saw it as a chance to rebuild the waning relationship he shared with then-wife Rita Hayworth.) However, the problem with Welles is that he excels so much at filmmaking that his worst still runs circles around most other directors' best. At 90 minutes long, this is basically an annotated version of the 2 1/2-hour cut Welles had submitted for release prints. Once again (reiterating Welles' career-long battles with his producers) unapproved editors were cut lose on it. But it's still one of the most gleefully dizzy and fun time machines I've come across. The colorful black-and-white cinematography comes off as disjointed due to the editing. But it's a blessing in disguise. Film noir dictates that shadows rule, both literally and figuratively. The darkness pulls the strings, and "The Lady..." lives up to that. It becomes a whirlwind journey that lands Mike O'Hara between South America and San Francisco's Chinatown, not to mention rendering him (and us) helpless under Hayworth's mesmerizing crooning on the deck of a boat. Yes, and the infamous, unparalleled "showdown" in a funhouse hall-of-mirrors, bringing the thematics of the genre to life as reflections and each spouse's altar ego are shattered into shards one by one. But I also harbor a cheap fascination with the world as it existed long before I was previed to it. '40s and '50s noir have the ability to instantly transplant viewers to forty or fifty years before whatever is presently happening outside their window. By no means the deepest picture released under the Welles filmography, "The Lady From Shanghai" remains a joyous, unabashed rollercoaster through the seediness of negative human nature. Capital escapism.Movie Review: EVEN BUTCHERED, WELLE'S GENIUS SHINES THROUGH!
Summary: 5 Stars
Orson Welles was a man ahead of his time. Today he may very well have been placed on the pedestal reserved for the likes of David Lynch or David Cronenberg. Unfortunately, during his tenure, Welles generally ticked off the ruling class and as a result, all of his masterpieces suffered at the hands of lesser men, determined to ruin Welle's screen legacies by chopping them up. Such is the case with "The Lady from Shanghai", a convoluted thriller about a guy who meets a woman who may want to have her husband killed or may not and sets up another guy to frame Welles for....oh, hell! Trust me, it's a real mind twister and just like "The Big Sleep" the ending makes no sense. Columbia executives took Welles' masterpiece apart after he had already departed for greener pastures and what remains is a 98 min. movie that really makes no sense. Having said that, the film left a lasting impression on me and a favorable one. Welles genius lays in his camera work, his ability to create mood and an unsettling atmosphere that can rival any film noir of his day or the present. Rita Hayworth, who by this time was ending her marriage to Welles, is the lady in question, her hair cut short and dyed blonde - both of which infuriated Columbia studio boss, Harry Cohen who put Hayworth on suspension shortly thereafter.
Columbia Home Video has done a remarkably fine job on the transfer of this movie. Contrast level is superb. Clarity is remarkable, even to the most minute detail in costume and set design. The moody film noir atmosphere is well represented. The audio, though mono, is also exceptionally well represented. No extras, save a brief little featurette and some stills. This is not a jam packed DVD but one that will definitely impress nevertheless. BOTTOM LINE: As vintage "Welles" its a classic bar none (except for Citizen Kane)!
Movie Review: Welles ` s inventive direction!
Summary: 5 Stars
Michael O 'Hara comes to the aid of a very alluring woman, she is intriguing and the imprecise and very brief conversation, she vanishes inside the night 's brumes.
Soon afterward he is hired as special member for pleasure cruise on a yacht owned by Artur Bannister the husband of the mysterious Elsa. He reminds us powerfully to Richard III 's cripple state. The dramatis personae will unfold to unexpected consequences, where a trial will be the last stage for O' Hara before he escapes in search of the truth. And in a very similar circumstance suffered by Susan in Touch of Evil, he will a wake in an amusement park to lead us to the famous sequence in the hall of mirrors. Fantasy, evasion and elusiveness three fundamental elements of the cinema will intersect in this phantasmagoric picture that so many films has inspired. The same Welles confessed in a famous interview in 1966: "I believe, thinking about my films, that they are based not so much on pursuit as on a search. If we are looking for something, the labyrinth is the most favorable location for the search. I do not know why, but my films are all for the most part a physical search: a visual obsession."
In this delirious movie converge basically all the elements present in the Shakesperian Tragedy, the unerring fatalism of the Noir Film and the absolute domain of the lens as a loyal and fervent mute storyteller through the visual imagery and the sordid environment where nothing seems worthy to trust. Welles explores the low depths of the unconscious through the gradual personality demolition and unavoidable deconstruction of the characters alienating the viewer to unbearable level. That' s exactly the cathartic device, to beat the soul through the catastrophe, without any possible handle.
Movie Review: Welles is the master
Summary: 5 Stars
I have to be Welles biggest fan!! Some people get confused about his films from the opening of the credits. Welles' flicks are always confusing, pervers, dramatic, often uncontrolled fits of dramatic power. Lady From Shanghai is one the best film noir's ever! The story is built around Welles as Michael O'Hara a dim witted sea man caught in the troubled marriage of Hayworth and Sloane. The film takes so many plot turns and twist that at key elements the camera takes dramatic drops and angle changes to keep the viewer off balance and unstable and it works! As the flick progreses Welles' character fallls for Hayworth and trys to win her love through a plot to help hayworth's husband business partner kill himself. But the plan is not all out in the opoen and the proposition laid in front of him by Sloanes partner played by a creepy and enchanting Glenn Anders is such a plot shifter you may fall off the couch in disbelief! Rather it's Hayworth trying to escape her husbands spys on a moon lit walk or the infamous hall of mirrors climax with glass, bullets, and screams or the courtroom chaos of Welles escape the visual style is pulse pounding! The flick is a pleasure from start to end the script is delicious and witty too - the beach scene where Welles' explains human nature through a shark analogy is awe inspiring. the camp fire giving his natural glowing eyes and cherub face a heightened intensity! The film is perfect in evry sense of the word! This is the best film that Hayworth ACTED in. She uses her looks and a newly found gravel to her voice that just resonates. The original running time was close to 3 hours but as it stands now with all the noir in play and visual treats abundant you will wonder how this film escaped your viewing for such a long period of time!