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…

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);…

One of the strangest and darkest old Hollywood studio releases ever. No one has any good or viable complaints about this thing, it thrives off its formal idiosyncrasies and mood. Plot doesn’t matter bc action never matters, or rather, action ONLY matters for as long as it’s an active visual component. Welles is never interested in the emotion and baggage it leaves behind and so the plot’s “high stakes” are met w apathy, no one gives a shit what happens and if they do they are just insane and pawns and yelling into the bottomless pit. It feels like a land forgotten or imagined, ethereal and off-kilter, animating through the transitionary mist... Blood-Curdling Screams I can’t shake.... but I’m forced…

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…

The speaker at the event where I got to see this the other day made a big deal about how the final film didn't fit with Orson Welles' vision and how it was a tragedy how the film was edited, footage lost, studio interference, etc.

I get that.

But at the same time, I think what we ended up with is a pretty good, if weird film. This is also where I'm also going to say that people who weep for what The Magnificent Ambersons could have been are ignoring that that is actually a really great movie and maybe Orson Welles shouldn't have skipped out to go South America to work on his new project. And frankly, what we…