The Lady from Shanghai
d. Orson Welles, 1947
The Lady from Shanghai may not be Orson Welles' best movie (that, to me, would be F for Fake [1976]), but it's just further proof that the man was just so good at making movies. Parts of the film didn't make sense to me on a first viewing, and sometimes the plot seems almost incidental, but Welles' compositions are at their most playful here. Needless to say, Welles and Rita Hayworth are both incredible here, and the supporting cast (which includes Everett Sloane as Hayworth's husband) is almost as impressive. Hayworth gets first billing here, but it's most certainly Welles' film. Not only did he write, direct, produce, and act in it, but he narrates the story to us; sometimes the way the character of Michael O'Hara speaks sounds more like Orson himself than just another character in one of movies.
