THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI

New Zealand Listener, Volume 19, Issue 485, 8 October 1948, Page 16

THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI

(Columbia) OBER reflection will, I think, persuade most filmgoers that The Lady. from Shanghai is a little too bizarre, too complicated, and too much of a virtuoso performance to be good art (if we agree that the cinema can at times réach that level). But it is also a good deal too tense and too exciting for one to entertain such academic objections other than as after-thoughts; it is, in fact, the best whodunit I have seen since The Stranger was around these parts almost a year ago. To be sure, if one is to abide by the letter of the word, neither film could be classed as a whodunit. In The Stranger Mr. Welles himself done it, quite early in the piece, and the excitement arose from speculation ‘on whether he’d manage to do it again before the forces of law and order caught up with him. The Lady from Shanghai, on the other hand, saves up its violence for the final scenes, and the problem is not so much whodunit as who is going to, It is perhaps hardly necessary to add that both are vastly superior to the ordinary conventional murder mystery. In this latest excursion into crime and punishment (as in so much of his screen work) Mr. Welles, who is a monstrously clever fellow as well as one of Hollywood’s few saving graces, almost stands on his head to show you how versatile he is. He wrote the, screenplay, and it is a minor. tour de force of dtamatic manipulation; he produced and directed it, and has done a first-class job in these departments; he plays the principal role (an Irish seaman with a hobnailed brogue), and plays it well. The ‘photography is unmistakably Wellesian-it fits the mood of the scene, is at times prosaic, at times beautiful, often fantastic in its angles and _ perspectives, occasionally brutal and shocking. But it never bores. The predominance of the fantastic both in the story itself and in the photo. graphy is, however, the real. weakness of the picture. The Stranger, despite its bizarre climax, was essentially a simple and straightforward story. The Lady From Shanghai is, one feels, made unnecessarily confused and complicated (particularly in the later sequences) merely to provide Mr. Welles with the opportunity to demonstrate the felicity with which he can unravel it. He makes good use ‘of the opportunity, and the climax of the action, in which the two principal villains (the cast is predomin- | antly villainous) shoot it out with one another in the mirror maze of a deserted amusement park, sticks in the memory for its crazy horror, if for nothing else. — What I would prefer to remember the film for, however, is the gang of curious characters with whom Mr. Welles has this time surrounded him-. self. Everett Sloane, as a criminal lawyer (in both senses), Glenn Anders as. his rascally partner, and Ted de Corsia as the lawyer’s butler-cum-private detec- , tive are all outstandingly good, even when measured against Welles himself, and of these three Anders was the one who intrigued me most. He has ‘a

pudgy, porous face, furnished with a pair of the’ most sinister and shifty pigeyes I have ever looked into, and since "he figures frequently in big close-ups (there are rather more than the normal quota of such shots in this film) you get the full impact of these evil but faseinating features at point-blank range. Add a gruesome snigger and the result is an authentic chill. I hope I see more of Mr, Anders. Though the enthusiasm of Mr. Welles and the strength of the other players did occasionally strike an answering spark from Rita Hayworth, her performance as the lawyer’s money-hungry wife gave Me no cause to revise an earlier opinion that her proper function is decorative rather than histrionic

BAROMETER FAIR TO FINE: "The Lady ftom Shanghai."’ MAINLY FAIR: "Green. Grass ot Wyoming."