The Lady from Shanghai has a queasy, love-hate relationship with star Rita Hayworth. How much this might be related to her brief marriage with the movie’s writer, director, and costar, Orson Welles, I’ll leave to the biographers, but on the screen at least, the film fetishizes Hayworth and then punishes her for its own obsessions.
Hayworth plays Elsa Bannister, the much younger wife of wealthy defense lawyer Arthur Bannister (Everett Sloane). Upon meeting unemployed sailor Michael O’Hara (Welles), both insist he join the crew of their yacht for a cruise from New York City to San Francisco. The journey involves insistent come-ons from Elsa; leering insinuations and insults from the frequently drunken Bannister; and lots of sweaty giggling from Bannister’s law partner and sailing companion, George Grisby (Glenn Anders).
Anders and Sloane are given the sort of grotesque close-ups that would later define Welles’ Confidential Report/Mr. Arkadin and Touch of Evil. Hayworth, meanwhile, is given about the same human dimension as she was allowed in her 1941 Life magazine pinup photos (maybe less, given the inner life photographer Bob Landry managed to capture in those stills). It’s a shame, because when she’s given a good line—such as “You need more than luck in Shanghai”—she wrings it for unexpected pathos. Seemingly recreating that Life series, Lady from Shanghai depicts her sunbathing on rocks and diving into the surf. In one of the film’s more audaciously provocative camera movements, an overhead shot traces Grisby passing a lighted cigarette up to Elsa, who is sprawled out on the top deck in a black two-piece that sets off her shock of cropped, platinum hair. It’s six seconds guaranteed to make you sweat.
If only The Lady from Shanghai balanced the objectification with at least some characterization, beyond what Hayworth manages out of sheer force of her charisma. Unfortunately, when Elsa is allowed to speak, she mostly delivers seductive, self-pitying riddles that are meant to do nothing more than spin O’Hara’s head. The bottom line is that Elsa is to be leered at and never trusted.
I suppose that makes her a femme fatale, but given the film’s limited vision of her, she’s an uninteresting one. Welles’ occasional voiceover narration and the convoluted plot—drawn from a novel by Sherwood King—also mark The Lady from Shanghai as a film noir. And while a seamless narrative isn’t necessary for what is at heart an existential genre, the disjointedness here undercuts the rhythm of Elsa and O’Hara’s relationship, making it hard to be invested in either character’s plight. (It probably didn’t help that the studio took the film from Welles and recut it before release.)
And yet, this is Orson Welles, which means that in between the misogyny and plot issues you’ll be treated to dizzying, filmmaking flourishes. Consider an early montage of the ship’s first days at sea, a surrealist series of sailing images interspersed with close-ups of the bug-eyed Bannister and the occasional shot of his dog. There’s also a sequence between Elsa and O’Hara in an aquarium that takes on the air of a half-remembered dream, with the two of them in silhouette before tanks of sea creatures. (At one point, it looks like a moray eel is about to chomp on Elsa’s head.)
The film’s visual tour de force is the climactic confrontation among O’Hara, Elsa, and Bannister, set in a carnival’s hall of mirrors. A psychedelic melange that superimposes still images over the mirrors’ reflections, the sequence manages to conjure multiple Hayworths in the same frame—some of whom are glam-bang gorgeous and others of whom are oddly distorted. This is exactly how The Lady from Shanghai sees her: at once irresistible and repulsive. Unable to reconcile those conflicting reactions, it makes the deeply disturbing decision in its final moments to blame her and leave her for dead.
