The Lady From Shanghai 1948

 

1948 was a great year for Film Noir. I was one year old and my Noir life hadn't really begun. My dark noir family life, the fights, the slug fests between parents, the fires they started the cars they crashed, the gambling, the speed and pills, my beautiful mother in her high heel shoes and black dyed hair. I thought my mom was Jane Russell or Ruth Roman. But I digress. Meanwhile Hollywood was slugging out these dark movies and in 1948 alone they threw at movie audiences Berlin Express, The Big Clock, Cry of The City, Force of Evil, Key Largo, The Naked City, He Walked By Night, Road House and many others. One of my favorite little B Noirs of that great Noir year was a real rhinestone “I Wouldn't Be In Your Shoes” and if you can find it fucking see it. The title alone deserves stardom, and can serve as a by line, a slogan, a pitch for all the above films, I mean for Christs sake I wouldn't want to be in any of these anti heroes shoes.

And then there was Orson. Who could even fit into his shoes let alone wear them, and I don't think he even wanted to be in his own shoes. So here he is in 1946 or around there trying to get more moola for his failing big musical Broadway extravenganza “Around The World In 80 Days” that he was doing with that other huckster Michael Todd. It had music by Cole Porter. So according to stories he's in a phone booth in some Whelans in Times Sq. giving a yell out to his beautiful wife's boss Mr. Fuck face Harry Cohn. Begging Harry for 50,000 bucks so he could pay for his costumes for that trip around the world and he temps the cruel crud with the tempting temptation of making a movie for him that he would also write and star in along with his gorgeous wife and Harry's big time contract movie star. Now I'm talking big. I'm talking Rita Hayworth still in her prime, still a great big beauty with her lush red hair and oh how Rita moved. No one moved like Rita, and no one still moves like her. Harry listens. He sees flashing before his beady blood shot eyes another “Gilda” another Put The Blame on Mame” another big blockbuster Radio City Music Hall movie. Oh says Harry so what is this picture about? Orson freezes up for a minute but his eye falls on the rack of cheap paperbacks, those rough detective yarns with all those babes in arms, those lurid lurids that my mom loved so much and would leave around our apartment that was a feast for my eyes and sexual imagination when as a pre teen as I would skim the browning pages for the “good parts.”

Orson sticks his hand outside the phone booth and grabs a a paperback “If I Die Before I Wake” by Raymond Sherwood King from the rack and reads the blurbs and plot synopsis on the back of the paperback to Harry. Harry he yells into the phone, the movie I want to make is “If I Die Before I Wake” and Harry plotzes in Hollywood Ca. That title has got to go Orson, and go fast. So Harry gives Orson the 50,000 to save his 80 Days except that it closes after 75 performances and so it goes and goes and goes. The screenplay also goes and goes and goes with several writers including William Castle yes that William Castle working along with Welles adding changing and stomping out the story now called “The Lady From Shanghai.”

Film history is made at night and in the early mornings and Orson is ready to take on his troubled wife and his troubled marriage with this far out story that has a few similarities with the original novel. The first thing Orson does is cut off all of Rita's long lush red hair that launched a billion fantasies and die's it blonde. Holy shit Harry freaks out, but Rita kinda likes the look and hell she would look great bald.

So now its time for Orson to cast the rest of the movie and he has a great time doing this, using some of his old pals from Kane and also from his Mercury Theatre group and introducing a few to films for the first time including the great Ted de Corsia.. He also gets Everett Sloan to play the key supporting role of Rita's “crippled” corrupt lawyer husband Arthur Bannister and Glenn Anders a little known Theater actor as Bannister's sinister law partner George Grisby who is sweaty, creepy and I finally realized after several viewings is probably gay in a late 40's way. This is an Oscar worthy performance by Anders and no doubt if it was made yesterday he would have one on his mantle, he is that good. He sweats and so do we. Welles cast himself as the lead, a wandering Irish merchant sailor named Michael O'Hara with a questionable Irish accent who is swept up like trash to be the pawn in their corrupt and sick plot.

The film opens with Welles/O'Hara narrating his woes as he flashbacks to a walk in a deserted central park set where Hayworth comes rolling along in a horse drawn carriage better known as a hansom cab that wants us to think New York City. A deserted 1948 New York City void of people cars or life. “Its only a paper moon just as phony as it could be, as the song sings.

O'Hara that black Irish son of a bitch plays and flirts with Hayworth trying to pick her up but she plays hard to get,at least for a minute. He offers her a smoke. “But I don't smoke” she coyly says. Yeah right and you don't fuck either, he is probably thinking. After this somewhat realistic scene everything begins to get weird and weirder as Hayworth gets attacked by some thugs and Welles comes to her rescue. Not much is made of this offense but we wonder who they were and why did they attack her.

Later on (off screen) she pushes her husband the “cripple” to go looking for Welles in a Merchant sailor hiring hall to get him to work for them on their luxury yacht on a voyage to Mexico. Let me out of here, I think to myself, strange doings are coming, the luck of the Irish is not a thing here so I buckle down for the ride. The yacht is real, belonging to none other than Errol Flynn who has lent or rented it to Welles for the filming maybe for a song and a dance and maybe for a cameo that some say you can spot him in the background of a scene or two. I didn't so I guess I will have to watch it again.

These on location Mexico scenes are beautiful really they are. Rita sunbaths on a cliff as Grisby drools and sweats over her through a pair of binoculars or is he drooling over Welles? There is an elaborate picnic that Sloan arranges that is a nod to the one in Kane, only somewhat more exotic and sinister and the plot thins or thickens depending on your mood. More strangeness is coming and man can Welles pack it in with a running time of only 87 minutes. Now its told that the original film was 2 hours but Harry cut it down and as it goes, the cut footage is gone, missing and never to be seen again lost with The Magnificent Ambersons in that great trashcan in the sky.

Grisby always sweating and bleating offers O'Hara a big payment of $5,000 to do something for him. Should I say what that is? Maybe I will, give me a few minutes to make up my mind, but in the meantime The feast of visual delights and ideas flow out through Welles in a rush of extraordinary cinematic images and sequences. There is a trial sequence that would make Lewis Carroll blush with envy, a chase on location in San Francisco's Chinatown that ends in a theater and the pounding jaw dropping shootout in an abandoned amusement park's chamber of horrors hall of mirrors. This is the loaded pistol, the winning hand, the art in the work of art, the scorching imagination of Welles the artist that brings this fantastic ending to this remarkable work of movie art. I will finally mention that the Kino transfer is superb, I thought I would fall into it, its that smooth lush and beautiful. I was nervous because the other Kino Welles flick that I got along with the lady was “The Stranger” which looked like Lassie had walked all over it. Not nice so I was nervous, but man I'll tell you this was the best 10 bucks I've dropped in a long time. The Best film, director, supporting actor, cinematography of 1948.