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Enticing sexy dip into film noir waters

Doug Anderson | Miami Beach, Florida United States | 09/27/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"The Lady from Shanghi's reputation is secure as a classic of film noir but then this genre is notoriously disrespected probably because many film noirs are based on dime novels and sound like it; in order to appreciate a film noir, therefore, you have to be able to enjoy the kitschy quality of snappy dime-novel dialogue. But kitsch alone is not what makes (some) film noirs great. What really sets film noir apart from other genres is its striking, even elegant, visual style which often contrasts sharply with its stark subject matter. Film noir has a way of glamourzing corruption, and giving corruption a unique aesthetic allure all its own. Film noir probably owes something to the German Expressionist film masters (Murnau, Lang, Von Stroheim) and the Hollywood grotesques of the 20's and 30's but it absorbs and evolves these influences into a highly refined style of its own. Orson Welles is the undisputed master of the high noir style. All of his films after Magnificent Ambersons mobilize film noir methods and techniques and so Welles' reputation rises and falls with that genre that he did not create but that he perfected.

Film noir came of age during WWII and like many film noirs Lady from Shanghai is about anxieties over race, class, sexuality, and identity and, in this particular noir film, negotiating racial, social, cultural and sexual difference in an increasingly globalized world. The film takes place in several international (Acapulco) and exotic (Chinatown) settings and these strange locales allow Welles to examine how his characters respond to a diverse array of atmospheres and social/cultural settings. Welles himself plays the central character in the film, Michael O'Hara, and to do so he affects an Irish accent (another international touch) that, some critics argue, is supposed to sound false/inauthentic. O'Hara has a way of talking that sounds a bit too self-consciously literary; and though he affects a working class worldliness his yarns sound like they come straight out of Conrad (O'Hara echoes many of Conrad's colonial concerns) and Hemingway (O'Hara echoes Hemingway's anti-Franco sentiments) and so we suspect that this character has spent more time reading and writing stories than in actually working. Whether we believe Michael's Irish brogue is authentic or not we know that he is fond of creating fictions and this casts suspicions on his identity as well as on his version of events that we hear on the voiceover. Furthermore, we can see that his obsession with literature has given him a taste for the romantic and the typically masculine posturing of his favorite literary heroes and instead of making him worldly wise this just makes him all the more gullible when a pretty lady and the promise of a new adventure come along.

Elsa (played by Welles' then-wife Rita Hayworth)identifies Michael as an easy mark the first time they meet. Unlike Michael Elsa actually is worldly and we can tell she's seen and experienced a lot and that she knows a lot about the world (not just read a lot about it) and she sees through Michael's pseudo-brogue and bravura right away and knows exactly how to exploit his romantic tendencies. She sums him up and plays him from the first moment they exchange knowing glances (hers much more knowing than his). Michael prides himself on his independence and his integrity but he just can't help falling for Elsa's pretend innocence and helplessness--its just too good to resist-- and he can't help wanting to come charging to her rescue even though there are signs everywhere that indicate that Elsa is in no need of rescuing. At first Michael resists her job offer but she is a woman who always gets her way and soon Michael is one of her employee/servants just like all of the other men in the film. Michael just can't tear himself away from Elsa's dangerously seductive & corruptive charms that he willingly and perhaps willfully misinterprets as innocence and helplessness only because that version of her makes him feel better about his own true motives. Michael has been hired on as an extra hand on Elsa's husband's yacht and as soon as he steps foot on deck everyone else aboard sizes him up and begins figuring how they can use him to further their own plots. Elsa's husband Bannister is a famous lawyer and both he and his partner Grisby are, like Michael, under Elsa's spell and trying to plot their way out of captivity. As the yacht pulls out of harbor we see the word "Circe" written in bold letters on the yacht's hull.

Elsa's past is a secret only hinted at (all we know is that she was born on an island somewhere in the east & spent some time in Shanghai). She looks like the penultimate American blonde but she is not from America and her cultural reference points are decidely eastern in contrast to Michael's western points of reference; to Michael she represents the unknown and perhaps the unkowable, and this is part of her allure and also what makes her so dangerous. "Elsa" is the prototypical femme fatale and the conventions of the film noir genre tell us that things will not end well for anyone that gets too close but she's just too enticing. The most famous scene of the film has Elsa in a sleek black bathing suit diving off some perilous rocks as if she were accustomed to such danger and as if danger was her natural element. But then she lays down to sunbathe on the rocks and from the relative safety of the boat Michael looking on, anxiously aware of how dangerous she is, can allow himself the comforting illusion that she is vulnerable and that she needs saving and that only he can save her not only from all the other male predators on board, but save her from her own eastern imbued fatalistism.

Elsa is so beautiful that she has all of the men in the film believing exactly what she wants them to believe and all of them believing that they've actually got a chance with her. And the men all slowly lose their head around her. Some of the men talk down to her but still they do what she says and she has all of them plotting against each other while lighting her cigarettes. The film has been criticized for having an impossibly tangled plot but I think the point of the film is that you are never supposed to be certain or not whether Elsa is merely defending herself against the men who want to control her or if Elsa has been in control of all of them (just like she has been in control of Michael) from the start. Even at the end we still want to believe that Elsa is a victim of something, perhaps something from her past that she just can't escape, but since we don't know what her past was we have no ultimate insight into what has been driving her all along nor for that matter do we have any insight into what originary crime or sin has been driving the men all along; all we know is that the sexes and the races and the classes are at odds. Elsa remains an unknown all the way through and Michael once ensnared must realize that he too is an unknown because under her influence he has been forced to act against what he perceived to be his own true nature.

The Lady from Shanghai offers some of the most stunning visuals of any film noir I know of. The Acapulco scenes are especially exciting as the danger and unpredictability of a foreign woman is made especially inviting and exciting in a foreign land. In this film Welles offers the ultimate noir vision of anxiously uncertain men and women attracted to each other but also repelled by what they find themselves attracted to and what they find themselves doing in the name of desire. Its a film noir and that means that the film follows certain recognizable conventions but it does more than simply follow those conventions, it pushes those conventions as far as they have been pushed and explores the nature of those conventions in a more thorough way than any noir before or, arguably, since. By the end of the film the characters have become lost in their own plots and no longer know who they are and this is conveyed brilliantly with Welles use of masks & mirrors in the celebrated and luridly twisted funhouse scene which feels a bit like the famous Dali sequence in Hitchcock's Spellbound but is even more disorienting & disconcerting (Spellbound was released in 1945 so it is possible, even likely, that Welles had seen it and that it influenced his own film that was made in 1946 and released in 1948). [In the extra featurette that follows the film we learn that Welles himself painted much of the funhouse props and set.]

There are a lot of bad noirs out there and these give the genre a bad name but the few good ones are among the best films ever made. Welles' reputation would be greater if film noir were better understood and appreciated not as a genre that is as cheap as the dime novels that inspired it but a genre where cinema explores its own methods and techniques. The great directors from Lang & Von Stroheim to Welles & Hitchcock to Godard & Chabrol and the other new wave auteurs have all been attracted to noir for this reason.

A brilliant film. After this film (which was a commerical flop) Welles didn't work in America for ten years and when he did return to America he made Touch of Evil (another brilliant noir film). Touch of Evil also failed to generate revenue and effectively ended Welles career as a mainstream director even though he continued to make independently financed small pictures like Othello, Macbeth, The Trial & Chimes at Midnight."