The Lady from Shanghai
|
List Price: Our Price: $6.99 You Save: $8.00 (53%) Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours Buy Used: from $3.42 (click here) Category: DVD See more DVD releases |
|---|
Buy this DVD movie at online store in your country
Canada
Canada
Movie Reviews of The Lady from Shanghai
Movie Review: Leave it to Welles...
Summary: 4 Stars
Regardless of the fact that some of his films can be disjointed, confusing and aggravating (although, you can hand some of the blame to the studios for that), there is no denying that fact that Orson Welles was a genius and most likely the greatest director of all time. `The Lady From Shanghai' suffers from it's lack of cohesion and a sense of aggravating confusion, but when all is said and done it is still a very compelling and rapturous film noir.
Feeling like a Hitchcock inspired take on a Tennessee Williams play, `The Lady From Shanghai' has enough going for it to balance out the inconsistencies working against it.
The film tells the story of an Irish sailor named Michael O'Hara who winds up seduced by a married woman named Elsa. Elsa's husband Arthur is a lawyer, an oddly sinister one, who offers Michael a job manning his yacht. Michael is suspicious, but he reluctantly takes the job. Once on board he meets the obnoxious George, Arthur's business partner, and is offered an odd proposition. George wants Michael to kill him, and in return he will make sure Michael receives $5,000.
Yes, as many have pointed out, the films plot (especially towards the end) gets jumbled and confusing and aggravating, but Welles has a powerful way of smoothing out our concerns. We forgive the film's plot holes because Welles leaves us spellbound with his precise way of cutting each scene effortlessly.
We are never let off edge.
When sitting back to analyze the film, it becomes apparent that Welles was rooting out his own feelings of loneliness and self examination. The cast of characters are obviously missing something pertinent to their happiness. There is a scene where Michael encounters Arthur, George and Elsa simply tearing one another to shreds with hurtful words and it becomes apparent to Michael that they are masking something internal with their careless words. The film carries a stunning tone, one of misery and abandonment, that helps to establish the films central focus.
Even though one may have trouble connecting the film's overall plot, one has no trouble finding the films moral heart.
The acting, for me, is hit and miss. Both Rita Hayworth and Orson Welles are spectacular. Hayworth is the epitome of seductive here, layering her character with enough internal longing and faux contentment to make her a soft and vulnerable seductress. Welles understands his characters dark dimensions, and he plays to them effortlessly. For me, Everett Sloane is a little too inconsistent. Some scenes work in his favor, but others have him feeling a tad overdone. I found Glenn Anders to be ridiculous and almost laughable at times. It is easily the worst performance in the film, which is sad because his character has one of the biggest arcs and a steady performance would have aided in the films core.
In the end I give this a solid B, and I totally recommend it. It is an engrossing noir that brings a lot to the table. Sure, it is not Welles' best offering, and it may leave you scratching your head a bit in the end, but overall it is still worth your attention and your meditation.
Movie Review: "It's a bright, guilty world"..."I told you...you know nothing about wickedness"
Summary: 4 Stars
"The Lady from Shanghai" crackles with Welles' energy and intelligence inspite of the tampering done during post-production by Columbia with the film. Welles ended up working his advesary Harry Cohn the head of Columbia on this unusual, imaginatively photographed (by the late great Rudolph Mate)noir thriller. This "Lady" is memorable if for nothing else than the amazing fun house scene at the conclusion of the movie.
Michael O'Hara (Welles)is immediately smitten with Rosalie (Rita Hayworth)the wife of the super wealthy Arthur Bannister (Everett Sloane in a terrific performance). He ends up employed by Bannister on his yacht putting him close to his wife and making sparks fly with the amoral Rosalie. Money seduces Michael into participating in a faked murder of Bannister's law firm partner Grisby (a great performance by Glenn Anders)which turns from fantasy to reality and making Michael the primary suspect.
Welles' film is full of brilliant visuals, witty dialogue and lovely location work (particularly the sequences set in 1948 San Francisco). The last sequence in the funhouse full of mirrors is brilliant realized. Like Hitchcock Welles' liked to take genre conventions and turn them on their head with inventive, intelligent plots and visual sequences. Where the film goes wrong is in post-production. With the exception of "Citizen Kane" Welles ended up abandoning his babies or had them taken away from him and messed with by studio heads. "The Lady from Shanghai" is not an exception. Welles uses extremely close ups to make us feel as uncomfortable as Michael does about his employers and the situation he finds himself in when he realizes he's been duped.
From the insistence that Welles go back and shoot glamor shot close ups of his soon to be ex-wife Rita Hayworth to meddling in the editing room and the misbegotten musical score (a pity Welles didn't have Bernard Herrmann working on this film)enforced on the film "The Lady from Shanghai" ended up being compromised. A pity that Columbia hasn't tried to dig up the cut footage (if it exists) along with the temp score (they could recreate that based on Welles' notes)that Welles used to help "guide" Heinz Roemheld (who totally ignored Welles' notes and the temp soundtrack) It still manages to a classic Welles film despite all the interference. Roemheld's forte was scores more like the one he composed for "Yankee Doodle Dandy" and he was totally out of his element here.
Columbia includes a fascinating commentary track by Peter Bogdanovich and vintage advertising to compliment this release. I just wish that Columbia had gone the route of Warner with "Citizen Kane" but the extras are pretty good overall. I'd highly recommend this now if Warner would get around to releasing "The Magnificent Ambersons" on DVD I'd be a happy camper...
Movie Review: Still, it IS Welles. . .
Summary: 4 Stars
I must confess at the outset that I am an Orson Welles fan. This is not to say that I am unaware of or wish to minimize his faults. What I mean is that, for me, his work possesses a set of characteristics, not all of them completely definable even yet, which are nonetheless rich and compelling. Furthermore, I maintain that enough (all?) of this "Welles aesthetic fingerprint survives the tribulation, sometimes extreme, to which his work was all too often subjected at the hands of others, to render even his lesser efforts very worthy of serious attention rewarded by enjoyment.
"The Lady from Shanghai" illustrates the above very clearly. Welles made the film at a very serious juncture in her career. His "boy wonder" reputation was fading rapidly. His political views were becomming less popular as the country began to move toward the right. His radio work had begun to dry up. His finances were a shambles. In desperation, he turned to Harry Cohn, a man he had contemptuously attacked, to support his latest project. He meant "The Lady from Shanghai" to restore his reputation as a viable filmmaker, proof that he could make a film that would be "aminstream" enough to pay off at the box office, and yet not represent artistic capitulation to commercial Hollywood. It was also to be a both a starring vehicle and a "stretch" performance for his then-wife, Rita Hayworth.
Unfortunately, the film proved typical of most of Welles work in one significant way: it was taken out of his hands in post-production, and as a result, was, when released, by no means the film Welles had in mind.
I inssist, however, that it does manage to succeed to a great extent as an intelligent, originally handled thriller. Welles's genius for visual elements -- location, lighting, camera angles, etc, retain their fascination and beauty. A certain viewpoint still pervades the handling of plot and character -- satiric, bitter, increasingly surreal. And, I maintain, Rita Hayworth does "stretch" as an actress, creating, with, admittedly, a lot of help from her husband and his camera, a memorable femme fatale. The high quality of her performance is uniform with the rest of the cast, such as the very fine Everett Sloane.
The is a film not only for fans of Welles, such as myself, but for anyone who enjoys an intelligent film noir,
Movie Review: DID THE STUDIO DO WELLES A FAVOUR?!
Summary: 4 Stars
A bit of a different take: Could the vindictiveness between Welles and Studio head Harry Cohn have ultimately saved this film and turned it into a out-of-sync classic?
It truly is a bizarre film. Both in the script/dialogue and in the strange outdoor/indoor filming--all combined in the same moments of the film. Cutaways that seem oddly out of place et cetera.
Cohn may have turned this twisted noir of a movie inadvertently into a classic. Uncut, it may have been one big bore fest with Welles obsessing over Hayworth. The plot, what there is of one, is opaque to the point of invisibility; only rapping things up at the end, and you accepting the rap up.
One has to wonder what the two versions would have been like if the cut footage had been saved and restored. Unfortunately, unless some camera man has that missing footage in a sealed container in his garage, we shall never know.
In the end, I think this horribly bizarre classic has gone down as another Wellesian visionary classic. He may have Cohn, and his malice towards Welles, to thank for saving what may have been "The My Marriage To Rita Story".
Only one regret: I wish they had saved the entire ending in the funhouse. Welles worked personally on the sets--painstakingly painting them by hand; and even cut, the funhouse sequence is a piece of film brilliance. It leaves you wanting the whole vision. But then again: it leaves you wanting more; so maybe Cohn did Welles an unwitting favour even in this.
But still . . .
You have to be an Orson Welles viewer to enjoy this out of kilter, queerly shot film.
The funhouse ending sequence is without a doubt a statement of the whole film and how it ended up: Shards on the floor with bodies strewn all over the place with their gasping words trying to clue you in as to what you just watched! :)
If not an aficianado of Welles strange career in cinema, just pass. You shall find it somewhat tedious.
IN CHRIST JESUS: THE LORD GOD INCARNATE!!!
Braithwaite
Movie Review: Orson Wells and Rita Hayworth Drama
Summary: 4 Stars
In London, Michael O'Hara meets Elsa 'Rosalie' Bannister and decides to introduce himself by offering her a cigerette. Elsa tells him that she doesn't smoke but takes the cigerette and wraps it in a napkin and insert into her purse. Michael hears a scream and sees three men pulling on both of Elsa's arms; Elsa is helpless against her attackers; Michael sees Elsa's purse and the cigerette and grabs it; the attackers are defeated soundly by Michael, who is an efficient fighter; Michaels learns from Elsa that she dropped the purse hoping Michael would see it and rescue her; this is the first clue that Elsa has a grand plot for Michael; Michael tells Elsa that he killed a man in Spain during the war; Michael guides Elsa's horse carriage to her car, a real stylish car; Elsa ask Michael work for her on her husband's boat; Michael tells Elsa that he won't work for a married woman.
Arthur Bannister asks Michael to be the Captain of ship which he plans to sail to San Francisco. Michael and his friends join Arthur in a drinking binge and then Michael decides to join the voyage because of his attraction of Elsa. George, Arthur's gay law partner joins the voyage. George sees Michael kisses Elsa and tells Arthur. Arthur is cruel to Elsa calling her, "lover"; Arthur suggests to Elsa that she would like Michael, a strong and bigger male; Arthur acquired the ship when one of his opponents perjuryed and used money to pay for a maid, who had worked for another law firm; Arthur knows that Elsa wants to murder him and take his money. Arthur is murdered by gun; a gun that Michael has seen Elsa use.
Elsa plot fails when her hired killer, kills George instead of Arthur. Michael forces Elsa to reveal the gun that killed George. At the Chinese fun house, Arthur and Elsa kill each other and Michael says, "sharks feeding on each other" suggesting his repulsion of the super rich and the conceit of the super rich with their feed frenzy arrogance.