Lady from Shanghai, The (1947)

Mercury Productions/ Columbia Pictures

Director: Orson Welles

Starring: Rita Hayworth, Orson Welles

Orson Welles shares a complicated history with motion pictures. Beginning with what many consider the best film of all time his relationship with Hollywood studios rapidly soured, hindering the vision of the once proud prodigy of the performing arts. His forth motion picture, The Lady from Shanghai, was a result of a favor lent to his theatrical company, resulting in frustrating Columbia Pictures for a production that went over schedule, over budget, and constant creative disputes with Welles. Much of Welles’ original vision would be changed with a final product further dividing the once celebrated filmmaker from the Hollywood movie marching machine. Written, directed, produced and starring Orson Welles himself, the picture showcases his estranged wife, Rita Hayworth, with a dramatic different look.

The Lady from Shanghai is a film noir about a drifter who joins a young seductress and her wealthy and crooked husband as a crew member on their yacht, only to find himself caught in a complex murder plot. Unable to follow his best instincts, adventurous Irish drifter Mike O’Hara (Orson Welles) joins the crew of a pleasure yacht due to his attraction to the beautiful and dangerous Elsa (Rita Hayworth), wife of an obvious crooked criminal attorney Arthur Bannister (Everett Sloane). Fearing Bannister’s dangerous reach in the criminal world, Mike and Elsa juggle temptation of running away together when Mike is propositioned by Bannister’s partner, George Grisby (Glenn Anderson), to help fake Grisby’s death in order to begin his life away from the criminal actions with his partner. Mike finds himself double crossed in an effort to frame him for murder in a rivalry between the two partners, culminating in a stylized climactic showdown between Mike and Bannister set in a disorienting hall of mirrors. As the lone survivor, a heartbroken Mike, feeling betrayed by the woman who he thought loved him, wonders off hoping to one day forget about the beautiful lady.

The film’s plot is a bit confusing upon first viewing. Initially it appears to be a romance between a adventurous man and a femme fatale before turning into a murderous thriller all tied up with film noir style. With the luxury of a pause button, multiple viewings, and shared interpretations an audience can better understand the storyline than a casual viewer whose mind may not be fully invested in the feature. The romance, or rather lust, between Mike and Elsa feels less fulfilling than what you might had hoped as we never get truly invested in their relationship, a complicated matter which Mike knows is bad for him from nearly the beginning.

What keeps us on track in the unique qualities Orson Welles the filmmaker brings to his style of production. The dialogue, acting, camera angles, use of shadows and silhouettes, and ultimately the climax with a room full of mirrors, this picture feels more personal that the usual Hollywood produced movie. It feels as if the director has something to say, or yearns to share a new perspective on the art form or storytelling itself. For some there may be no impression at all from this picture, rather it is a normal film noir with a plot that is a bit of a mess. For others, the film is a stylized feature that takes the genre and presents it is a new, intriguing manner, that although does not bring fulfillment in form of plot, leads the audience down a path we may have seen before, but in a new way.

Frustrated by Hollywood by the mid-1940s, Orson Welles found himself back in New York working with his Mercury Theater Company, this time producing a musical adaption of Jules Verne’s “Around the World in Eighty Days.” When his producer Mike Todd, who would eventually go on to produce a film Oscar winning adaption of the Verne classic in 1956, left the production Welles had to find finances to finish his play on his own. Welles would strike a deal with Columbia studio head Harry Cohn to write, direct, and produce a picture for Columbia in exchange for over $55,000 to help push the play into opening. The play would be a flop, but the deal with Cohn resulted in the picture The Lady from Shanghai.

Welles would star in his own feature and at the request of Harry Cohn the picture would also feature his famous wife, movie star and pin-up Rita Hayworth. The couple despite being married just over three years was having deep issues with Welles’ inability to settle down, devoting himself to his craft over any idea of a family. For the feature Welles surprisingly had Hayworth cut back her famed red locks and bleach her hair to present a dangerous blonde character for the role of Elsa. To dramatically alter her iconic look which Columbia was hoping to benefit from greatly frustrated of Cohn, just the tip of what would be troubled relationship between studio head and filmmaker.

Everett Sloane would be featured as the film’s primary antagonist. A product of the Mercury Theater and having worked with Welles in Citizen Kane, Sloane embodied the performance style Welles sought in a dangerous older gentleman. His portrayal of Bannister evoked power and greed, a man willing to crush anything in his way despite his smaller, more feeble frame. Portraying his partner Grisby is stage actor Glenn Anders, who was officially hired after his first scenes in the picture were shot. These types of hires were very much in the style of Welles as he relied more on the actors from the stage for their way to fully embody characters than film actors, especially name stars who may have lacked range in Hollywood.

Shot on location in Mexico and San Francisco, Orson Welles was given an unexpected initial freedom for his production. Having partially learned from his experience on The Magnificent Ambersons and The Stranger, Welles produced the picture in longer and sometimes more complicated shots, avoiding the use of close ups, a trick he utilized to maintain his creative control over the studio’s editor by leaving little room for cutaway edits.

With Welles and company away from the studio lot directly sending reels to the editor Cohn and powers at Columbia grew increasingly nervous over the production as filmming began to run long and over budget with little contact with Welles himself. Welles frustrated actors on set with his meticulous shooting style and his ever changing script, constantly rewriting pages on a nightly basis. This left actors feeling helpless as what they could do to prepare coming to the set as what they had the night prior was usually thrown out upon their arrive..

When Welles finally present his first rough cut of The Lady from Shanghai Harry Cohn hated it finding it long and difficult to follow, stating he would pay anyone $1000 to explain to him the plot. Cohn would force Welles to do many reshoots, demanding close-ups, not only to enable edits, but to feature the allure of Rita Hayworth’s beauty. Already long and over budget, the struggle between producer and filmmaker drug on the process and escalated the cost of the picture futher. In the end Cohn had over an hour of the feature cut out even after the reshoots, destroying the negatives to keep Welles from adding them back in, leaving only production stills as there lasting proof of many lost scenes.

Further trimmed was the climactic finale in a seaside amusement park capped with the funhouse and its hall of mirrors. The mirror sequence, albeit trimmed, remains a highlight of the feature, utilizing special effects, and creative staging to generate unparalleled imagery seen in movies at the time. With repeating images of the actors, some from different angles at the same time, and others going on indefinitely by way off shooting through hidden holes or two way mirrors, the style was truly unique, and purely Welles, who loved thinking beyond conventional filmmaking.

Welles was furious with Harry Cohn for what he believed was destroying his vision, feeling he was ultimately removed from creative control as the film was edited down to the picture we see today. Upon release, critics shared generally mixed reviews. American audiences would not embrace the feature as well as European markets did, where it was praised for its dark and unique stylings. Around this time also saw Welles’ disappointments grow as his divorce to Rita Hayworth was finalized, leaving this as their only picture together.

It would take decades for American audiences to begin to embrace the picture, praising Welles in his later days for his creative vision. Sadly his reputation as a filmmaker that took too long to shoot his picture, usually going well over budget, and being difficult to work with would keep him from ever making him a director embraced by the Hollywood system. This left him an embittered artist to his end days, fighting to find what he could to continue to make films for the rest of his career, haunted by the ghost of his initial film, Citizen Kane. The Lady of Shanghai has gained a greater following in the generations after the old Hollywood days in the later half of the 20^th century. Sadly Welles never received the satisfaction for his work on the picture which contributed to the genre of film noir.