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The Lady From Shanghai

7.7

12,210

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Original title: The Lady From Shanghai
Year: 1947
Running time: 87 min.
Country: United States
Director: Orson Welles
Screenwriter: Orson Welles. Novel: Sherwood King
Music: Heinz Roemheld
Cinematography: Charles Lawton Jr. (B&W)
Cast: Orson Welles, Rita Hayworth, Everett Sloane, Glenn Anders, Ted de Corsia, Erskine Sanford, Gus Schilling, Carl Frank, Louis Merrill, Evelyn Ellis, Harry Shannon
Producer: Columbia Pictures
Genre: Film noir. Mystery
Synopsis: A seaman, Michael O'Hara (Orson Welles), is hired as a crew member on the yacht of the wealthy Arthur Bannister (Everett Sloane). His beautiful but mysterious wife Elsa (Rita Hayworth) has met O'Hara earlier, when he saved her from a mugging. What ensues is a complicated and bizarre pattern of deception, fraud and murder, with O'Hara finding himself implicated in a murder, despite his innocence.

Rankings Position

#32 Best Film Noir Movies
#55 Best Mystery Films

Critics' reviews

"Script is wordy and full of holes which need the plug of taut story telling and more forthright action."

William Brogdon: Variety
"The weirdest great movie ever made."

Dave Kehr: Chicago Reader
"For a fellow who has as much talent with a camera as Orson Welles and whose powers of pictorial invention are as fluid and as forcible as his, this gentleman certainly has a strange way of marring his films with sloppiness."

Bosley Crowther: The New York Times
"The plot (...) isn’t especially brilliant, but Welles did notice something special about the deceptive nature of shiny surfaces (...) Rating: ★★★★ (out of 5)"

Joshua Rothkopf: Time Out
"'The Lady From Shanghai' is fueled by two powerfully grotesque characterizations (...) At once fluid and discordant, 'The Lady From Shanghai' is filled with virtuoso set pieces."

J. Hoberman: The New York Times
"What an overstuffed, wondrously weird movie it is (...) It’s affirming in its assertion that Welles could make art out of anything (…) Rating: ★★★½ (out of 4)"

Chuck Bowen: Slant
"The plot is a magnificent mess of switchbacks and revelations, climaxing with one of cinema’s most outrageously inventive sequences"

Tom Huddleston: Time Out
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Ranking Lists Position

25 My Favorite Noir Movies (190)

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