Variety
Script is wordy and full of holes which need the plug of taut story telling and more forthright action.
Full review
The Lady from Shanghai
Orson Welles' 1947 noir, led by Welles himself and his wife at the time, Rita Hayworth (Gilda). The pair become caught in a web of obsession and a mysterious murder plot.
"In financial chaos, with his critical reputation ebbing, and his marriage to Rita Hayworth floundering, Orson Welles was grateful to accept Columbia boss Harry Cohn’s surprising offer to direct an adaptation of R. Sherwood King’s 1938 thriller If I Die Before I Wake, with Hayworth as co-star. In a noir thriller of labyrinthine entanglement, Welles portrays an Irish sailor who accompanies a beautiful woman and her husband on a sea cruise and becomes entwined in a murder plot, culminating in one of cinema’s famous finales: Hayworth’s frantic ice-blonde femme fatale surreally reflected in a hall of mirrors – read by some as a comment on the stars’ marriage." (London Film Festival)
Less1947Rating: PG, Violence87 minsUSA
DramaThriller
- Director:
- Orson Welles ('Citizen Kane', 'Touch of Evil', 'The Magnificent Ambersons')
- Writer:
- Orson Welles
- Cast:
- Orson WellesRita HayworthEverett SloaneGlenn AndersTed de Corsia
The Lady from Shanghai | Reviews
The New York Times
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.
Full review
Empire Magazine
Though the plot is impossible to follow, there are many glimpses of Welles' signature atmosphere-making.
Full reviewThe Lady from Shanghai | Trailers
The Lady from Shanghai | Release Details
The Lady from Shanghai is available to stream in New Zealand now on Apple TV.