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The Lady From Shanghai, a complex, involving puzzle-within-a-puzzle
mystery story, is a showcase for Orson Welles, showing his singular
talents and sensibilities as few other films have. The story is
superficially simple: a seaman Michael O'Hara (Welles) is hired as a
crew member on the yacht of the wealthy Banister (Everett Sloane). His
beautiful but mysterious wife Elsa (Rita Hayworth) has met O'Hara
earlier, when he saved her from a mugging. What ensues is a complicated
and bizarre pattern of
deception, fraud and
murder, with O'Hara finding himself implicated in a murder, despite his
innocence. The film is best remembered for its final sequence when the
plot comes to a literally smashing climax in the famous "hall of
mirrors" sequence, with Elsa and Banister shooting it out amidst shards
of shattering glass.
Orson Welles, who produced, directed, wrote and
starred in the film, is sometimes self-indulgent in his use of visual
tricks and techniques, which at times sacrifice plot for visual
brilliance, but he pulls it together in the end to produce a stunning,
difficult film. Rita Hayworth gives one of her best performances as the
deceptive, seductive temptress, hard-edged and cynical. The film
confounds, unsettles and disorients the viewer, very much as Welles
intended to do. While not an easy film, it is well worth the attention
required to follow it, and Welles offers no easy solutions or any false
happy endings to his tour-de-force mystery. ~ Linda Rasmussen, Rovi
