|
 |
The Ladies from Shanghai
|
by Sony Pictures
Sales Rank: 5639
Price: $19.98
|
|
|
Legend has it that Orson Welles more or less conned studio boss Harry Cohn over the phone into making this movie by grabbing the title from a nearby paperback. In any case, <I>The Lady from Shanghai</I> is one of Welles's most fascinating works, a bizarre tale of an Irish sailor (Welles) who accompanies a beautiful woman (Rita Hayworth) and her handicapped husband (Everett Sloane) on a cruise and becomes involved in a murder plot. But never mind all that (the aforementioned legend also claims that Cohn offered a reward to anyone who could explain the plot to him). The film is really a dream of Welles's driving preoccupations on- and offscreen at the time: the elusiveness of identity, the mystique of things lost, and most of all the director's faltering marriage to Hayworth. In the tradition of male filmmakers who indirectly tell the story of their love affairs with leading ladies, Welles tells his own, photographing Hayworth as a deconstructed star, an obvious cinematic creation, thus reflecting, perhaps, a never-satisfied yearning that leads us back to the mystery of <I>Citizen Kane</I>. <I>--Tom Keogh</I>
Viewer Reviews
A bit of a different take: Could the vindictiveness between Welles and Studio head Harry Cohn have ultimately saved this film and turned it into a out-of-sync classic?
It truly is a bizarre film. Both in the script/dialogue and in the strange outdoor/indoor filming--all combined in the same moments of the film. Cutaways that seem oddly out of place et cetera.
Cohn may have turned this twisted noir of a movie inadvertently into a classic. Uncut, it may have been one big bore fest with Welles obsessing over Hayworth. The plot, what there is of one, is opaque to the point of invisibility; only rapping things up at the end, and you accepting the rap up.
One has to wonder what the two versions would have been like if the cut footage had been saved and restored. Unfortunately, unless some camera man has that missing footage in a sealed container in his garage, we shall never know.
In the end, I think this horribly bizarre classic has gone down as another Wellesian visionary classic. He may have Cohn, and his malice towards Welles, to thank for saving what may have been "The My Marriage To Rita Story".
Only one regret: I wish they had saved the entire ending in the funhouse. Welles worked personally on the sets--painstakingly painting them by hand; and even cut, the funhouse sequence is a piece of film brilliance. It leaves you wanting the whole vision. But then again: it leaves you wanting more; so maybe Cohn did Welles an unwitting favour even in this.
But still . . .
You have to be an Orson Welles viewer to enjoy this out of kilter, queerly shot film.
The funhouse ending sequence is without a doubt a statement of the whole film and how it ended up: Shards on the floor with bodies strewn all over the place with their gasping words trying to clue you in as to what you just watched! :)
If not an aficianado of Welles strange career in cinema, just pass. You shall find it somewhat tedious.
IN CHRIST JESUS: THE LORD GOD INCARNATE!!!
Braithwaite
Back To Top
|
The Ladies from Shanghai
Available from Amazon
|
|
NOTICE: All product prices, availability, and specifications
are subject to verification by their respective retailers.
Copyright © 2009, Dominant Systems Corporation
info@HowlingVideo.com
Privacy Policy
Last Modified : 1-8-2009
|
