Jeanskynebu the audience applauded

VividSimon Simply Perfect

FuzzyTagz If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

Taraparain Tells a fascinating and unsettling true story, and does so well, without pretending to have all the answers.

Brucey D It is popular to either praise this film to the heavens or to dismiss much of it as style over substance, depending on whether you think Welles was a genius or not.I think you should watch the film and make your own mind up. It seems to me that the end result is a bit of curate's egg, i.e. it is good in parts. Perhaps this is symptomatic of how things were for Welles at the time; his marriage to Hayworth was in the process of disintegration, and his professional life was chaotic; the aims of the studio were very different from Welles, and they had control over the finished item. His rough cut was shortened by an hour, and a lot of what was left was supplemented with expensive and time-consuming reshoots, and edited to barely resemble the original. The music was also changed, much to Welles' chagrin. The result was that the film was delayed by a year and went over budget; by the time of release, Welles' relationship with both Hollywood and Hayworth were each well and truly over. The plot is convoluted, confusing, and in some parts nonsensical. Whether it would have been much different in the original cut is open to debate, but I doubt it. It is nearly always interesting to watch; the camerawork, the acting, Hayworth's beauty, the location shooting are all very engaging. By contrast Welles' Irish accent is more than a bit dodgy and the film has clearly suffered in the edit.This is an interesting film, certainly, but as it stands a brilliant one, probably not. Not as bad as the knockers would make out, but not as good as some reckon, either.I enjoyed it, but as with most of Orson Welles' films, one is left wondering what might have been, under other circumstances.

elvircorhodzic I wonder, if necessary with a clear story to make a complex movie. Welles is probably knew what he was doing. I think that some segments are superfluous. While looking at the totality of the movie I really like. I must admit that at times I had the impression that director is bored. Scenery is at the level. Expressionist style is commendable. The atmosphere answer noir, particularly in instances where the narrator sounds dazed. The story of an ordinary guy (sailor), the mysterious femme fatale, murder, love, hate, greed, jealousy, and of course money. Nothing special.The tension in the shadow of confusion of the main character. He initially acts like he does not feel selfishness, crime or pathetic. The vicious young man, charming blond beauty, a criminal lawyer and frantic enthusiast correspond with noir themes.Rita Hayworth as Elsa "Rosalie" Bannister is a balm for the human eye. Redhead, blonde ... who cares. A victim of its own deception in hazardous locations. Performance is solid. Its role is perhaps a little vague.Two lunatics. Sloane as a successful, self-centered lawyer and sick husband. Anders as annoying, vague and delighted enthusiast. Both actors are the right choice.Orson Welles as Michael O'Hara is playful in its own particular incident. I've used a couple of times a sweet laugh, when the main protagonist tries to be serious. Romance is not passed the exam. The culprit is solely Welles. The best is in the narrative. It was discovered absolutely everything about this movie.THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI is very exciting movie, in which a little more experimentation. Anthology scene a final settlement in the house of mirrors will certainly be remembered. I will remember the final monologue.

tieman64 "The Lady from Shanghai" is a 1947 film noir by director Orson Welles. The film was famously "butchered" by Colombia Pictures president Harry Cohn, who removed about half of Welles' footage and replaced it with extensive and expensive re-shoots."Shanghai" is narrated by Michael O'Hara (Orson Welles), an Irish sailor who gets swept up in a plot involving crooked lawyers, rich businessmen and sultry femme-fatales (Rita Hayworth). Like most of Welles' film, its aesthetic is busy and bombastic to a fault. Welles assaults us with all manners of trickery, including off-beat camera angles, strange accents, unusual compositions, copious long shots, extreme close ups, grandiose location photography, audacious crane shots, leering shots of Hayworth's bikini-clad body and manic fun house sequences which include a visit to a Hall of Mirrors. Welles so commits to his "throw everything including the kitchen sink" approach, that he even hits us with giant fish, giant octopuses and a courtroom filled with shenanigans too bizarre to describe. There's even an apocalyptic subplot in which characters pontificate the End of the World! As "The Lady from Shanghai" doesn't represent Welles final vision, Welles intentions for the film remain unknown. Some view it as a film about the dissolution of Welles' marriage to Rita Hayworth, whilst others see it as a tale unreliably narrated by a madman. Others view it through a political lens, O'Hara a disillusioned dissident (he fought against General Franco in the Spanish Civil War, whilst the film's chief villain admits to being pro-Franco) and leftist trapped in a landscape of visual distortions and so forever unable to "fit" into the world. This world, he explains, is one of conniving sharks, humans destined to "eat themselves up" via deranged blood-frenzies. However one reads "Shanghai", it offers one of the most baroque and bizarre handlings of familiar noir tropes.7.9/10 – See "Out of the Past" (1947) and "Double Indemnity".

sharky_55 Dave Kehr calls this film a true 'film noir comedy'. It seems to me that this perspective manifests in the way that the universe of The Lady from Shanghai continually and incessantly laughs at Michael O'Hara's misfortune and helplessness. Certainly Welles has obliged stylistically - his strange, morphed compositions increasingly begin to collapse around O'Hara as he is drawn slowly into the mystery of the murder conspiracy. The blocked paths of the actors criss-crossed and circle each other venomously as the aquarium creatures loom large in the background. The narrator seemingly jumps readily inside his own story as the voice-over switches seamlessly into dialogue. And then there is that famous climax in the house of mirrors where all sense of direction and orientation is abandoned for our characters - each shot and each shattering of glass further distorts the space (although the lost footage is apparently much longer and grander). In some instances the cosmic farce is literal in its humour - as the hobbling Bannister ends up on the stand interrogating himself in the trial that is little more than a slapstick affair. But for all the effort in maintaining this pervasive aura of paranoia and disorientation by ramping up the convention stylistic tones of noir the film falls a little flat. The murder plot itself, which is meant to be increasing hard to follow until that final reveal, is secondary to Welles' atmosphere, so what we have is a distancing effect due to his own plodding, almost bored narration guiding us along. What is supposed to be irregular and affecting merely highlights its own flaws - the clumsy ADR dubbing which does the dialogue no favours, the oddly stilted romance that doesn't quite lure us into a false sense of security (perhaps a casualty of the director and starlet's impending divorce), awkward little zooms and smash cuts that merely draw attention to themselves rather than establish a tone. I would so very much like to see this lost artefact.