Review of The Lady from Shanghai (1947) by Seth S — 31 Jul 2012

Convoluted, watery, zany movie directed by Orson Wells. In my experience, half and half, Wells movies are bad. He can be good, The Third Man and Citizen Kane as examples, but sometimes, not so great. The sad thing is, is that most times, his bad movies start out promising for 15 or 20 minutes. They lay out a story and questions that you think are going to be answered later, but they never are. They give you characters with motives that you think are going to be explained, but they aren't.

The story is of Michael O'Hara. He is hired by some pretty crazy people to help on their yacht. After the trip, O'Hara is framed for murder.

Orson Wells stars as O'Hara. He is ok, nothing special. Rita Hayworth plays Elsa, the yacht owners wife. Once again she is, decent, not of note though.

Overall, this movie seems overlong at only 87 minutes. It runs out of steam at about the half hour point, the rest is just meandering wackiness that doesn't make for a clear narrative. The performances are inconsistent, and some of the lines are delivered in the weirdest way. Apart from a few clever voice-over lines at the beginning and end, and some interesting visuals, this movie really has nothing going for it, in my opinion.

"When I start out to make a fool of myself, there's very little can stop me. If I'd known where it would end, I'd never let anything start... if I'd been in my right mind, that is. But once I'd seen her, I was not in my right mind for some time." 2/10.