Reel Retro-Spectives: The Lady from Shanghai (1948)

Barry Germansky
Contributor
Neglected and misunderstood by most film critics, Orson Welles’ The Lady from Shanghai deserves to be known for far more than its wonderfully bizarre visuals. The tongue-in-cheek film noir satirizes everything from bureaucratic institutions to storytelling techniques in film and narrative to parts of human behaviour. Most impressive is how Welles connects all of these social criticisms together through a paradoxical focus on the theme of disconnection.
Wanting to poke fun at the often labyrinthine plotlines of most film noir mysteries, Welles made The Lady from Shanghai’s plot purposely incomprehensible. In the broadest sense, it’s about an Irish vagabond in San Francisco named Michael O’Hara (Orson Welles) who is seduced by femme-fatale Elsa Bannister (Rita Hayworth) to kill her lawyer husband, Arthur (Everett Sloane). There are so many asides and offbeat moments in between, however, keeping track of who is double-crossing who runs into the realm of impossibility. At one point, Michael tries to recount the events of the plot over the film’s soundtrack and drives himself crazy.
The Lady from Shanghai’s flexible, multi-faceted sequence of events creates a parade of different social commentaries. The best of these involves a court scene in which Arthur, representing Michael for being wrongfully accused of murder, cross examines himself in the witness stand. The scene shows how court cases are often more about satisfying the egos of lawyers instead of seeking justice for their clients.
The acting is deliciously quirky and theatrical. Orson Welles expertly conveys the confusion of a simple man caught within a scenario he doesn’t understand, and Rita Hayworth’s sudden transformation from a “gentle flower” to a crazed, murder-happy black widow during the celebrated house of mirrors sequence is genuinely creepy. Best of all is Everett Sloane as Arthur Bannister, whose exaggerated gait and swaying on crutches brilliantly mirrors his crooked character.
The film’s fragmented visual style reflects the narrative and the psychological states of the characters well; the fact this is the only aspect of the film that has received near-universal praise is unfortunate. Every eccentric gesture in The Lady from Shanghai is even more than a supremely entertaining moment of “pure movie” from a unique filmmaker; each is a critique on how people burden themselves and society with an over-reliance on bureaucratic rules.