Cheap The Lady from Shanghai (DVD) (Orson Welles, Rita Hayworth) (Orson Welles) Price

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Customer Reviews of The Lady from Shanghai

"I came to in the Crazy Room."
Michael O'Hara "Black Irish" (Orson Welles) is hired by famed criminal lawyer Arthur Bannister to work as a crew member on board his yacht--the Circe--for a trip down to Mexico. O'Hara agrees--he's already got an eyeful of Bannister's extremely attractive wife, Elsa (Rita Hayworth). Then Bannister's sleazy partner, Grisby approaches O'Hara with a strange offer. Grisby offers O'Hara a quick $5,000 if he agrees to "pretend" to kill Grisby. Grisby's hardly credible explanation for this outlandish behaviour is that he wishes to disappear with the insurance money.

The plot of "Shanghai Lady" has more holes than a slab of Swiss cheese. Added to that, Orson Welles has the absolutely worst Irish accent I have ever heard. But the film works ... in some ways. The Bannister's marriage is incongruous at best, and it's easy to slip Rita Hayworth in as the femme fatale who married for money. Some of the minor characters are guilty of extreme over-acting, and Welles doesn't put his heart into the role. However, the scenes in the courtroom and the over-the-top ending make the film worthwhile. The DVD comes with a few extras--including a worthwhile interview with Peter Bogdanovich, Talent Files (bios of Welles and Hayworth), vintage advertising (depictions of numerous posters advertising the film) and four film trailers ("Lady of Shanghai" "The Loves of Carmen" "The Last Hurrah" and "A Man For all Seasons").

"Shanghai Lady" was the victim of the decaying marriage between its two stars--Welles and Hayworth. The final film length was 155 minutes, but the studio slashed it down to 88 minutes. Who knows what the director's cut would look like?--displacedhuman

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No Film Noir Collection Is Complete Without This.
In my teens, Welles was just a fat guy with a deep voice, until my father recommended I see "The Lady From Shanghai" at the cinema. It was the first film I saw which truly opened my eyes to the camera's eye. After RKO gave Welles the sack, & Hearst's Hollywood sympathisers all but ruined his reputation, Orson made "The Stranger"--on time & within budget to renew studio bosses' faith in him. I believe this is why Harry Cohn gave him another go at Hollywood. Cohn bit hook line & sinker. Welles then cast his wife, the beautiful Rita Hayworth & gave her her first role as the villian. He made a radical, spellbinding film for 1948,of which audiences missed the point & criticised the plot. This "unusual" masterpiece shut Welles out of Hollywood for a good few years to come~(The beginning of his lifelong struggle to make films)~. All because he remained true to himself & his art. The "mirrors-scene" at the end is one of the most unforgettable scenes in cinema history ~(it's been copied many times)~. This alone was worth Orson's struggle,in my view. A must see to believe. Can't give anymore away, if you haven't seen it. If you like Welles, you're gonna love this movie. A classic, worth every penny for the DVD. Give it a go.

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"Are you looking for a good paste in the eye?"
No, not Welles' best film. It couldn't be, since "The Lady From Shanghai" was actually a chance for Welles to get back in good with the studio system, a.k.a. the money picture that gets made when they won't let you be an artist. (Too, he saw it as a chance to rebuild the waning relationship he shared with then-wife Rita Hayworth.) However, the problem with Welles is that he excels so much at filmmaking that his worst still runs circles around most other directors' best. At 90 minutes long, this is basically an annotated version of the 2 1/2-hour cut Welles had submitted for release prints. Once again (reiterating Welles' career-long battles with his producers) unapproved editors were cut lose on it. But it's still one of the most gleefully dizzy and fun time machines I've come across. The colorful black-and-white cinematography comes off as disjointed due to the editing. But it's a blessing in disguise. Film noir dictates that shadows rule, both literally and figuratively. The darkness pulls the strings, and "The Lady..." lives up to that. It becomes a whirlwind journey that lands Mike O'Hara between South America and San Francisco's Chinatown, not to mention rendering him (and us) helpless under Hayworth's mesmerizing crooning on the deck of a boat. Yes, and the infamous, unparalleled "showdown" in a funhouse hall-of-mirrors, bringing the thematics of the genre to life as reflections and each spouse's altar ego are shattered into shards one by one. But I also harbor a cheap fascination with the world as it existed long before I was previed to it. '40s and '50s noir have the ability to instantly transplant viewers to forty or fifty years before whatever is presently happening outside their window. By no means the deepest picture released under the Welles filmography, "The Lady From Shanghai" remains a joyous, unabashed rollercoaster through the seediness of negative human nature. Capital escapism.