Film review: The Lady From Shanghai (1947)

Want to watch a slightly-chubby Orson Welles fall for Rita Hayworth while talking in a blarney-drenched cod-Irish accent?  Have I got the film for you!  A bit of an oddity, it starts like a sort of romance film, switches into Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf on a yacht and then turns into a regular film noir, with a slightly-comedic courtroom scene thrown in.  And it wraps it up with a wonderfully inventive ending shootout in a funhouse, complete with multiple mirrors.

Where to start? Well, in what appears to be Central Park, where Welles's Michael "Black Irish" O'Hara first spies Hayworth's Elsa Bannister taking a ride in a horse-drawn buggy. He is smitten enough to give her his last cigarette.  She reveals that she doesn't smoke, but wraps it in her hankie and puts it in her handbag anyway.  Seems like he successfully corrupts her, though:

Or does he?  She's a slippery customer.  She's been as many places (hence the title) as he has, and he's a professional sailor.  Turns out she's married, too, which she only reveals after he's saved her from a gang of thugs another day.  (Was it staged, you will wonder later on.)  He is heartbroken and ready to return to sea, when her husband, Arthur (a famous trial lawyer, who got himself off a murder rap for killing his last wife) seeks him out to persuade him to come on a sailing trip with them.  This is where the marital sniping (the flames of which are fanned by his law partner, the outrageous and weird George Grisby (I am intrigued to see anything else Glenn Anders is in).  As the nightmare trip draws to a close, Grisby approaches O'Hara, whom he knows has killed in the Spanish Civil War, with a proposition: kill someone for $5000.  Who, wonders O'Hara. 

"Me" reveals Grisby.  Of course, this is a ploy: he reveals that he is (already?  in 1947?) scared of bombs falling on San Francisco (where the law firm is based) and wants to fake his death to get an insurance payout so he can live out his days on a remote Pacific Island.  All (?) Michael has to do is be seen with a gun at the wharf where George disappears, and sign a confession that he accidentally shot Grisby.  But with no corpse, he cannot be tried.  Of course it's a trick, and Grisby intends to frame Michael, but there will be crosses and double crosses to come.  Michael does indeed end up on trial, with Arthur "defending" him (not exactly enthusiastically, since he knows that Michael and his wife are sweet on each other).  Rather preposterously, Michael escapes from the courthouse to hide out in Chinatown, where the Chinese-speaking Elsa tracks him down, still groggy with the pills he had to swallow as part of his escape.  From there, it's a short step to the final shootout.

Strange, but memorable, with some great lines and wonderful images.  Check it out!