The Lady From Shanghai [1948] | ![The Lady From Shanghai [1948]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51R6NVT4XEL._SL160_.jpg)
 enlarge | Director: Orson Welles
Actors: Rita Hayworth, Orson Welles, Everett Sloane, Glenn Anders, Ted De Corsia
Studio: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
Category: DVD
List Price: £12.99
Buy New: £3.57
You Save: £9.42 (73%)
New (12) Used (2) from £3.57
Rating:  2 reviews
Sales Rank: 9056
Format: Black & White, Full Screen, Pal
Languages: English (Original Language), Icelandic (Subtitled), Portuguese (Subtitled), Italian (Subtitled), French (Subtitled), German (Subtitled), Turkish (Subtitled), Arabic (Subtitled), Czech (Subtitled), Greek (Subtitled), Danish (Subtitled), Dutch (Subtitled), Norwegian (Subtitled), English (Subtitled), Hebrew (Subtitled), Spanish (Subtitled), Hindi (Subtitled), Bulgarian (Subtitled), Polish (Subtitled), Swedish (Subtitled), Hungarian (Subtitled), Finnish (Subtitled)
Rating: Parental Guidance
Region: 2
Discs: 1
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Number Of Items: 1
Running Time: 87 Minutes
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.1 x 5.4 x 0.6
EAN: 5035822789630
ASIN: B00009V8XU
Theatrical Release Date: June 9, 1948
Release Date: August 18, 2003
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.co.uk Review
Legend has it that Orson Welles more or less conned studio boss Harry Cohn over the phone into making The Lady from Shanghai by grabbing the title from a nearby paperback. In any case, this is one of Welles's most fascinating works, a bizarre tale of an Irish sailor (Welles) who accompanies a beautiful woman (Rita Hayworth) and her handicapped husband (Everett Sloane) on a cruise and becomes involved in a murder plot. But never mind all that (the aforementioned legend also claims that Cohn offered a reward to anyone who could explain the plot to him). The film is really a dream of Welles's driving preoccupations both on and off-screen at the time: the elusiveness of identity, the mystique of things lost, and most of all the director's faltering marriage to Hayworth. In the tradition of male filmmakers who indirectly tell the story of their love affairs with leading ladies, Welles tells his own, photographing Hayworth as a deconstructed star, an obvious cinematic creation, thus reflecting, perhaps, a never-satisfied yearning that leads us back to the mystery of Citizen Kane. --Tom Keogh
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| Customer Reviews:
 flawed but should be seen December 7, 2005
thomas12321 (denmark)
5 out of 9 found this review helpful
Coming straight from a viewing of The Third Man, one of my all time favourites, and a great performance from Welles, The Lady From Shanghai was a bit of a dissappointment. Welles's acting is the foremost problem. It's as if he was unsure of what to make of the character, where to place him so to speak. Welles who would usually steal the whole scene with the tiniest gesture, here struggles to get involved in his character and give it any sort of real life and consistence.
The other problem is the flow of the movie. Apparently an hour was cut, much to Welles's dismay, and it certainly left the movie very disjointed at places.
Why should you give it a view, then? Well, for one thing the three other principal characters all have something to offer. Rita Hayworth is quite extraordinary, just as mysterious as those famous Hitchcock-blondes (she had to cut and bleach her famous red hair for this one). And her final scene with the scream, "I don't want to die" - that's chilling!
Everett Sloane and Glenn Anders are great too in their parts, both of them playing really bizarre, half comic, half nasty characters.
And then of course there is the famous scene, the showdown, in the fun park and the hall of mirrors, severely cut according to Peter Bogdanovich, but still marvelous stuff.
The Lady From Shanghai is far from being a masterpiece like Citizen Kane but still there is much to be enjoyed.
 Film noir classic with still-contenporary shadings January 14, 2001
11 out of 12 found this review helpful
Welles takes the lead and also directs with his soon-to-be-ex-wife, Rita Hayworth taking the role of the femme fatale. At the time, Welles was accused of creating a deliberately confusing and disjointed film to spite her, forcing her to cut and bleach her famous flowing red locks for the part. Welles plays a seaman (Mike O'Hara) who rescues Hayworth from muggers in a park at the beginning of the film. Hayworth is married to a famous trial laywer (Bannister) who is also crippled and twisted, both physically and mentally. Bannister persuades Welles to serve on his private yacht taking him, his wife and his partner on a cruise along the Mexican coast. During the voyage - shot with wonderfully atmospheric lighting - O'Hara is asked by Bannister's partner to help him fake his own death, for a "small fee". Now obsessed with Hayworth, and feeling that he must rescue her from this environment, Welles agrees. The stage is now set for a twist, with the partner's mysterious death, leaving O'Hara looking the clear murderer. Bannister - who is now sure of O'Hara's involvement with his wife - agrees to defend him, determined to loose this case. Just before the jury gives its decision, O'Hara manages to escape from the courtroom, setting things up for the finale, which takes place in the hall of mirrors of a deserted fun park. Apart from the awfulness of Welles' cod-Irish accent, and his inability to show much credibility in the fight scenes, the film's wonderful lighting and cryptic dialogue - delivered straight by the actors - bowls along well, with some wonderful set pieces such as Welles and Hayworth in the aquarium, Bannister cross-examining himself in the court scenes and the finale in the hall of mirrors.
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