That\u2019s a great story, and Welles, ever the storyteller, expanded and retold it for years thereafter. What actually happened, biographer Simon Callow explains in his book Hello Americans<\/em>, was a good deal less dramatic: Welles was indeed in dire financial straits, and had reached out to Cohn for work when a costume bill came due, though certainly not on opening night. And the project was not selected at random \u2013 R. Sherwood King\u2019s 1938 novel had been on Welles\u2019s radar for years, and he had in fact agreed to appear in it for up-and-coming filmmaker (and future B-movie impresario) William Castle, should Castle get the project off the ground. He didn\u2019t, so Welles swiped the property for himself. And it was Cohn, not Welles, who had insisted on the team-up with Hayworth \u2013 as the couple, once the toast of Hollywood\u2019s gossip pages, had at that point been separated for the better part of a year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And yet. The Lady from Shanghai <\/em>is nevertheless colored by what\u2019s outside the frame, by the circumstances that led its participants to it, because of Welles and Hayworth\u2019s history. It is, by definition, pulp \u2013 a film noir <\/em>thriller, complete with a femme fatale<\/em>, a sap, a rich husband, a murder, and a complicated plot that ties them all into various knots. Nothing is ever quite what it seems, as they say, in a story like this, and Welles seems (not unreasonably) to have taken that approach to its logical conclusion: if the plot is an illusion, a series of smoke and mirrors, then why get too invested in it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Instead, he takes a roundabout route to the types and tropes, subverts expectations (he infuriated Cohn by transforming famously redheaded Hayworth into an icy blonde), and indulges primarily in mood and style. From a contemporary perspective, the first half or so of The Lady from Shanghai<\/em> feels less like Welles than Howard Hawks \u2013 with the kind of loose, hangout vibe he would create with the ensembles of Only Angels Have Wings<\/em> and Rio Bravo<\/em> (among many others). It doesn\u2019t feel subservient to plot the way that even the best noirs often do. Which is not to say that plot isn\u2019t happening; it\u2019s that Welles is less interested in its machinations than in how his characters interact. He revels in the spiky sexual tension between his drifter sailor Michael O\u2019Hara and Hayworth\u2019s Elsa Bannister, who is unhappily married to Arthur Bannister, a wealthy criminal attorney (played by Welles\u2019s frequent collaborator Everett Sloane) who is crippled not only from polio but his unrequited love for his wife with a wandering eye. . \u201cWould you like to work for me?\u201d she asks O\u2019Hara, her voice dripping with possibilities. \u201cI\u2019d like it.\u201d He enjoys the unspoken unease between Michael and Arthur Bannister And when Arthur Bannister, drunk aboard his luxury yacht , starts rambling about whether money can buy happiness, in front of his servants and subordinates, you can cut the strain with a knife.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What\u2019s most striking, on a surface level, is the sweaty sexiness of the movie. The heat generated by not only the tropical climates they\u2019re cruising through but the actors and the characters is palpable (\u201cDo all rich women play games like this?\u201d he asks), and Welles\u2019s camera absolutely caresses Hayworth; she\u2019s never been hotter on screen, not even in Gilda<\/em>. We sense the effect her attractiveness has on him, both as a man and a filmmaker \u2013 when he (and the viewer) get their first eyeful of Hayworth in a swimsuit, his face is out of focus in the foreground. She\u2019s made him all blurry. That blurriness turns to paranoia, which begins to invade the narrative; it soon feels like everyone wants a piece of Michael, for their own cross-purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The virtuosity of the filmmaking is what most people talk about when they talk about The Lady from Shanghai<\/em>, and for good reason. The camera movement is electrifying (the cinematography is credited to Charles Lawton Jr.), and the compositions sizzle; get a load of the uncomfortably tight close-ups when Hayworth takes the stand in the circus-like, out-of-control courtroom sequence. And then there is the justifiably beloved carnival climax, in which Michael finds himself wandering a funhouse, ranting and raving (only semi-coherently) in the voice-over, before finding himself facing both Elsa and her husband in a hall of mirrors that serves as a pointed visual metaphor for the events of the previous 80 minutes. The visual wizardry of the sequence \u2013 reflections, eyes, superimpositions, triptychs \u2013 still dazzles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n All of which makes Lady from Shanghai<\/em> a damned fine potboiler, but the stars are what make it more. Welles is a charismatic and magnetic actor, and his work here (dodgy Irish accent aside) is no exception. But Hayworth\u2019s performance is next- level. Elsa draws Michael in with her vulnerability, and though he tries to resist her with his world-weary cynicism, we know he\u2019s a goner, and he knows it too. But that vulnerability is what sticks, even when Welles\u2019s script insists it\u2019s fraudulent, because the way Hayworth looks at Welles\u2026 well, you can\u2019t fake that. And when he muses, in the final voice-over, that \u201cMaybe I\u2019ll live so long I\u2019ll forget her\u201d or \u201cMaybe I\u2019ll die trying,\u201d there\u2019s little doubt which way Michael \u2013 or Orson \u2013 is going to go. “The Lady from Shanghai” is now streaming on Amazon Prime<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/lady2.jpg\")
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