Other Titles • The Lady from Shanghai • Black Irish (1947) • The Girl from Shanghai (1947) • Take This Woman (1947) • Die Lady von Shanghai (1950)
Synopses for The Lady from Shanghai (1947)
1.
Legend has it that Orson Welles more or less conned studio boss Harry Cohn over the phone into making this movie by grabbing the title from a nearby paperback. In any case, The Lady from Shanghai is one of Welles's most fascinating works, a bizarre tale of an Irish sailor (Welles) who accompanies a beautiful woman (Rita Hayworth) and her handicapped husband (Everett Sloane) on a cruise and becomes involved in a murder plot. But never mind all that (the aforementioned legend also claims that Cohn offered a reward to anyone who could explain the plot to him). The film is really a dream of Welles's driving preoccupations on- and offscreen at the time: the elusiveness of identity, the mystique of things lost, and most of all the director's faltering marriage to Hayworth. In the tradition of male filmmakers who indirectly tell the story of their love affairs with leading ladies, Welles tells his own, photographing Hayworth as a deconstructed star, an obvious cinematic creation, thus reflecting, perhaps, a never-satisfied yearning that leads us back to the mystery of Citizen Kane. --Tom Keogh
2.
THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI, an atmospheric film noir based on Sherwood King's novel IF I DIE BEFORE I WAKE, features Orson Welles as producer, director, co-screenwriter, and star. Welles plays rogue seaman Michael O'Hara, complete with Irish brogue. After saving beautiful Elsa Bannister (Rita Hayworth) from thieves in Central Park, O'Hara is requested to serve on the yacht owned by Elsa's husband, Arthur (Welles veteran Everett Sloane), an older man who needs special crutches in order to walk. A fiery passion lurks underneath the relationship between Michael and Elsa; in actuality, the marriage between Welles and Hayworth was ending at the time the film was shot. Enter George Grisby (the eerie-sounding Glenn Anders), one of Bannister's associates and a man with a very special offer for O'Hara, luring him into a web of lies and murder.
Although Welles claimed he made THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI just to finance other projects and the film does not show off his typical Wellesian flair, it still plays like a classic noir that draws the viewer in and never lets go. The characters are complex and fascinating, and the tension runs high and hot as the truth behind all the lies starts to come out. The film is most famous for its thrilling climax, which takes place in a hall of mirrors. Welles might have considered THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI workmanlike, but this noir thriller is only as workmanlike as any Welles film can be.
3.
Baffling murders, fascinating plot twists and remarkable camera work all contribute to this spellbinding, time-honored film noir written and directed by and starring Orson Welles. Hired to work on a yacht belonging to the disabled husband of femme fatale Rita Hayworth, Welles plays an innocent man drawn into a dangerous web of intrigue and murder.
The subject of great controversy and scandal upon its initial release, The Lady From Shanghai shocked 1948 audiences by presenting Hayworth with her flaming red hair cut short and dyed champagne blonde. Fifty years later, The Lady From Shanghai is considered vintage Welles, his famous hall of mirrors climax hailed as one of the greatest scenes in cinematic history.
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