Review of The Lady from Shanghai (1947) by Jeff B — 26 Jul 2010

This is an Orson Welles movie so of course it is GEEE-NIUSSS! Towering unfathomable GEE-NIUSS!

The plot goes something like this: An Irish sailor played by Welles, sporting a Lucky Charms accent, is hired by a disabled defense attorney at the behest of his beautiful wife played by Rita Hayworth because Welles saved her from some thugs earlier. Then Welles meets this other guy who offers him $5,000 to fake his own murder so he can collect some insurance money. He explains that if no body is found Welles can't be prosecuted. I'm pretty sure that's incorrect, but Welles agrees to it anyway so he can run away with Hayworth, and even signs a confession. That's an idiotic twist, but then it gets even more complicated with double and triple crosses which made no sense, finally ending in the famous house-of-mirrors set piece.

The story, in short, is absolutely incomprehensible. I suppose you could read this movie as a sendup of film noir conventions, I've heard that before, but I think that's giving Welles too much credit. It sounds like revisionist horsesh*t to me. I think it's really just another mess of a movie from Emperor Welles with a few well composed visuals.

It seems to me that after making "Citizen Kane", Welles could throw any sloppy piece of crap on the screen and people would worship it. "Citizen Kane" is such a great movie it seems to have fried the critical faculties of movie lovers everywhere. This Wellesian groupthink needs to stop because "The Lady from Shanghai" is mostly crap. Orson Welles is not a god.

(Since this movie is offered Instant Watch on Netflix, you could just fast forward to the last ten minutes. That's the surreal funhouse scene which is the most visually interesting thing in the movie. You don't need to sit through the rest of it, you have better things to do, I'm sure. If some pointy headed film geek ever brings it up in conversation, just pretend you watched all of it. Trust me, he won't question you on plot points, he couldn't follow it either.).