'The Lady from Shanghai' - Movie Review

Not so well known as "Citizen Kane," "The Lady from Shanghai" is still a well known movie directed by and starring Orson Welles. Truth is, I never "got" "Citizen Kane." I understand that it's a good movie, but I don't love it. And the obsessive love this one gets - I don't understand it either. One of the few things it convinced me of was that Rita Hayworth was beautiful: but then, Welles was married to her at the time, so she got LOTS of close-ups (and turned in one of her best performances).

Welles plays Mike O'Hara, sporting an Irish accent he should have passed on. It's not very good, and a couple places where his words are out of synch with his lips suggest it was so bad they had to go back and get replacement tracks after shooting. O'Hara is a sailor who saves a beautiful woman (Hayworth) from a mugging in Central Park. He then flirts with her and eventually finds out she's married. The next day her very rich lawyer husband (Everett Sloane) comes to recruit O'Hara to work on their yacht on a long trip. Things get twisty.

I particularly liked Sloane as the acidic and generally nasty husband, and Glenn Anders as his slightly mad partner was pretty damn entertaining too. But as a whole I thought the movie wasn't much of a success as it tries to be a film noir.