alr

The Lady from Shanghai

Screening on Film
Directed by Orson Welles.
With Rita Hayworth, Orson Welles.
US, 1948, 35mm, black & white, 84 min.

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.
 

Part of film series

Read more

Classics of World Cinema

Other film series with this film

Read more

Chinatown on Film

Read more

Orson Welles, Part One

Current and upcoming film series

Read more

Ben Rivers, Back to the Land

Read more

Harvard Undergraduate Cinematheque

Read more

Albert Serra, or Cinematic Time Regained

Read more

Wang Bing’s Youth Trilogy

Read more

The Shochiku Centennial Collection

Read more

Planet at 50

Read more

The Yugoslav Junction Continues!

Read more

Theo Anthony, Subject to Review

Read more

The Ideal Cinematheque of the Outskirts of the World