Review of The Lady from Shanghai (1947) by Matthew B — 23 Jun 2007

Michael O'Hara, (Welles) gets hired on as a crew member of millionaire cripple Arthur Bannister's yacht, sailing to San Francisco where they pick up the scheming Grisby, Bannister's lawyer, and Bannister's wife, Rosalie (Hayworth) who seems to like Michael much better than she likes her husband. And so begins a plot that ends with Michael blamed for murder and Bannister (the actual murderer?) defending him in court.

Lady From Shanghai came about when Welles had to borrow money from the head of Columbia Pictures, Harry Cohn, to finance a theater production. Cohn wanted a movie in return. Welles hadn't planned to use his estranged wife in the movie, the marriage was failing at the time, but she was a star at Columbia and Cohn insisted. Welles' decision to have Rita Hayworth cut her hair and bleach it caused a storm of controversy, and many in Hollywood believed it contributed to the film's poor box-office returns.

Probably Welles's most striking knack was for making stories look the way they mean. That's a definition of filmmaking, but it's surprising how little it's done or with how little imagination by modern directors.

Possibly the most dramatic example of it is in this film: the climactic gun battle between Rita Hayworth and Everett Sloane (Bannister) in a funhouse mirror maze. The point about it is the way in which it presents the meaning of what is going on between this husband and wife as they frantically lunge and grope in every direction to find the "real" spouse among the fake ones as they literally shatter their whole grotesque world by shooting the place up. What could you compare it to? Maybe the shower scene in Psycho. But we'll never know how good Welles's really is because it was recut by the studio.

Welles's finished version was two and a half hours long but what you'll see is eighty-seven minutes. The studio removed an hour. That's the reason the movie has a voice-over narration, to try and help cover over the rough spots, and seems a little dislocated in parts.

One tends to leave a Welles film stimulated but sad at some kind of failure or loss and the studio's confidence in the movie remained so low they didn't release it for two more years, however, the Welles magic is there for all to see.