Welles brings his metaphysical and psychological preoccupations, as well as his heated camera and editing style, to the genre of film noir in this story of a Spanish Civil War veteran and adventurer (played by the director himself) who falls for a charismatic but dangerous woman (Hayworth, Welles’s wife at the time). She leads him into an abyss of personal intrigue and moral bankruptcy that famously climaxes in a chase through a Chinese theater and a gun battle in a funhouse with large, distorting mirrors. With spectacular location shooting in San Francisco and Acapulco, the film nevertheless becomes a largely mental or spiritual space, a landscape of pure romantic ecstasy and existential uncertainty.