Performances : 7.2/10
Story : 9.3/10
Production : 7.7/10
Overall : 8.06/10

The Lady from Shanghaiis easily the worst Orson Welles production that I've seen. The camera work doesn't blow me away...which isn't necessarily fair, as it really is fine, I'm just used to so much more from Welles. The lighting doesn't quite work for the genre and the score was out of place. Also I didn't really love his performance as "black irish". The accent just seemed so awkward and forced. However, besides Citizen Kane this film is probably Orson Welles' best story. It twists around more than most Noirs dare to do and it features some of the most thrilling closing moments I've personally ever seen put to…

Decades Project: 1/4 of the 40's

"Everybody is somebody's fool."

Everyone loves a good puzzle. The anticipation while you put it together, the satisfaction once it's complete; it's great. Mysteries are like puzzles (duh), except you have to watch someone else put the pieces together. You never know if they're hiding extra pieces up their sleeve or throwing out pieces that don't fit or making a different puzzle altogether.

So here's the deal with The Lady from Shanghai: it's definitely a puzzle (duh), but Welles puts the pieces together so many times and in so many different ways that by the end of it all you're not sure if you've got the final picture or if the edges of the…

The Lady From Shanghai is my introduction to Orson Welles. As with every director I have just embarked on, I have no idea why it takes me so long to get to these classics. There is definitely some prejudice on my part, even if I know that I enjoy films from this era. Every time I watch one, I love it. Yet, it feels so demanding and different from modern film that I manage to talk myself out of watching one. When the DVD finally gets put into the player, however, it takes no time at all for me to realize just how stupid I had been. The Lady From Shanghai is yet another stellar example of this stupidity with…

FILM SCHOOL DROPOUT: A 2017 year-long movie challenge
My list | Disgustipated's master list
Week 12: Orson Welles

The more I learn about Orson Welles as part of this Film School Dropout challenge, the more I realize that the truth about him as a person is a complicated mix of what his fans and his critics have had to say about him over the years. Because yes, as academic apologists have asserted long after the fact, Welles was undoubtedly a genius whose undoctored work was years ahead of its time, unfairly chopped apart afterwards by studio hacks who didn't get what he was going for (see my review of The Magnificent Ambersons from the beginning of this week for more);…

"(They were) like the sharks, mad with their own blood, chewing away at their own selves." ~ Mike O'Hara

This is almost the perfect example of 1940s film noir, except for one thing: Orson Welles' gawd-awful Irish accent. He plays Michael O'Hara, a merchant sailor who gets mixed up with a beautiful damsel in distress, Elsa Bannister, who is played by a surprisingly blonde, short-haired Rita Hayworth. Hayworth, of course, was the former Mrs. Wells at the time, and her on-screen presence is remarkable. The camera loves her. And clearly she could still channel her feelings for her ex.

The story doesn't have a whole lot to do with Shanghai, but Elsa spent time there when she was younger, learned…

Against his better judgement an Irish sailor lets himself be drawn into the plotting of a rich couple and their associates.

Best known for its sequence of a shootout in a funhouse mirror room, much of the rest of The Lady from Shanghai seems a little delirious. Everything is a touch off, as if everyone involved was bored with standard Hollywood crime movie tropes so they decided instead to make the oddest choice whenever possible, even concerning the pronunciation of the work "target."

Courtroom scenes are the banes of my filmgoing life but there's never been one quite as loopy as the one here. It climaxes with a defense attorney on the witness stand cross examining himself. It's ludicrous and…