Tagline: “Do all rich women play games like this?”
The Lady From Shanghai movie storyline. Orson Welles’ imaginative, complicated, unsettling film noir who-dun-it thriller – a B/W tale of betrayal, lust, greed and murder. With fascinating visuals and tilting compositions, luminous and brilliant camerawork (by Charles Lawton, Jr.), and numerous sub-plots and confounding plot twists.
Orson Welles served as director, producer, screenplay writer, and actor, and based his screenplay upon Sherwood King’s 1938 novel If I Die Before I Wake. The moody film, originally titled Take This Woman and then Black Irish, was made when major stars Orson Welles and sexy Rita Hayworth (with dyed and bobbed bleached-blonde hair) in her last film under contract to Columbia Pictures) were still married although estranged and drifting apart.
Poor Irish seaman Michael O’Hara (Welles), after rescuing Mrs. Elsa ‘Rosalie’ Bannister (Hayworth) and becoming mesmerized by her – the enigmatic wife of a crippled San Francisco trial lawyer named Arthur Bannister (Sloane), he joins her yachting cruise as a crew member from New York to San Francisco (via the Panama Canal), and finds himself embroiled in a love affair and a mysterious plot (to kill Bannister’s creepy business partner George Grisby (Anders)) that turns deadly and implicates him in murder. [The numerous close-ups of Rita Hayworth in the film were later added by Welles in Hollywood upon orders of the studio, to lend strength to her ‘star’ power.]
The film, told through O’Hara’s narration, was shot on locations including Acapulco, San Francisco, and at Columbia Studios sets, and features numerous classic set-pieces including: the aquarium scene, and the funhouse and Hall of Mirrors shoot-out climax. Ultimately, the film’s length was severely cut down by one hour, creating an almost incomprehensible, discontinuous, cryptic patchwork from numerous retakes and substantial edits. Although it was filmed in late 1946 and finished in early 1947, it wasn’t released until late in 1948. The film was mostly ignored – it failed both at the box-office and as a critical success. This was Welles’ last Hollywood film until the making of Touch of Evil (1958) ten years later.
The Lady From Shanghai (1948)
Directed by: Orson Welles
Starring: Rita Hayworth, Orson Welles, Everett Sloane, Ted de Corsia, Glenn Anders, Erskine Sanford, Gus Schilling, Carl Frank, Louis Merrill, Evelyn Ellis, Harry Shannon
Screenplay by: Orson Welles
Cinematography by: Charles Lawton Jr., Rudolph Maté, Joseph Walker
Film Editing by: Viola Lawrence
Costume Design by: Jean Louis
Set Decoration by: Wilbur Menefee, Herman N. Schoenbrun
Art Direction by: Sturges Carne, Stephen Goosson
Music by: Heinz Roemheld
Distributed by: Columbia Pictures
Release Date: June 9, 1948
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