Orson Welles remains an enormous presence in American cinema.  His likely indefinite influence is based, almost entirely, on his debut feature, Citizen Kane (1941).  Moreover this reputation for one film is, almost certainly, deserved.  Similar to such cultural touchstones as The Beatles or David Bowie, the film, in spite of monolithic and often uninspired adulation, seems to have indeed ascended to such rarefied esteem on merit and unique vision.  As such there is also a fairly substantial school of contrapuntal deflating or qualifying of the legacy.  This balance was most prominently proposed by Pauline Kael, herself nearly sacred to the art and the business.  Her revision casts Welles as a nearly mythic artistic tragedy; a brilliant and outrageously talented young man who grew increasingly too stubborn, narcissistic and out of touch for his own relevance.  This version of Welles has also grown into a sort of bumbling caricature; Welles the smug elitist, too clever by his estimation for Hollywood and fading into conspicuous consumption and rapidly diminishing creative output.  To indulge a noncommittal cliche the truth is probably somewhere between.  But with regard to Welles I’m far from ambivalent.  In the interest of disclosure I admit I am totally and blindly enamored of Orson Welles.  In spite of, or very likely essentially because of the film geek cliche of this position it tends to only strengthen with the passage of time and further debate.  For me it suggests a another popular music corollary.  Welles is strangely like the Mars Volta of filmmakers to me.  He is obviously bombastic and self important and is also, over repeated assessment, almost confoundingly fascinating.  Or like Kanye West and, to a degree, Philip Roth criticism is at once entirely valid and somehow beside the point.  The intense level of self absorption becoming a masochistic theatre of self-scrutiny.  Now, with that hodgepodge of tenuous connections, are there anyone’s artistic sensibilities I haven’t offended?

So to what degree does this inform The Lady from Shanghai (1947)?  Is this just a fanciful reimagining of what was really an arduous production of a pulp legal thriller?  The film is these things.  It was rather crassly undertaken to address Welles’ spiraling finances and to provide a reliable star turn for Rita Hayworth to maintain the momentum of Gilda (1946) which is the natural other half of the Brattle’s Mon-Tues double feature.  It was almost comically beset by on-location difficulties, personality clashes, a burgeoning schedule deficit, illness, and threats from distributor Columbia Pictures (which followed through in wresting the editing of the film from Welles’ supervision)  Through all of this Welles is said to have remained engaged and enthusiastic.  The circumstances surrounding The Lady from Shanghai and it’s fractured final realization of shifting tones and playful, stylistic exercises is certainly uneven.  Particularly set against the exacting detail applied to the world of Citizen Kane, this film seems unmoored.  Unmoored and susceptible to influence as Welles’ portrayal of Michael O’Hara.  A man weak to his passion for a woman essentially owned by her aging, wealthy husband.  She is also, it turns out, more manipulative siren than life’s passion.  It’s dime-store analytical and the analogies to creative dreams and desires are not handled with much subtlety.  The climatic scene takes place amongst multiple, illusory funhouse mirrors literally blurring reality and it’s replica.  But Citizen Kane’s symbolism wasn’t exactly impenetrable either.  And while most films would look rather flimsy in the deep, shifting shadows of Gregg Toland’s photography of Citizen Kane the various locations are dazzlingly and energetically exploited.  The funhouse sequence, though heavily truncated in edits, remains an impressive and woozily delirious dash.

The Lady from Shanghai can be seen as an unsteady transition into more directly reflective concerns.  Out of necessity as Welles’ fortunes waned, he often worked more quickly and cheaply.  He focused less on spectacle and toyed with more self-reflexive notions of performance and narrative impulse.  Welles and his Mercury theatre burst into American entertainment fully formed and larger than life.  In many ways he ended up interrogating the motivations of Orson Welles as a character.  Viewed as a darkly, dreamlike depiction of unfulfilled desire The Lady from Shanghai stumbles around themes of authenticity and illusion that Welles unpacked with deft self-awareness and heartfelt sincerity in F For Fake(1973).  What’s truly remarkable is that years of professional false-starts and disappointments seems to do nothing to diminish his zeal or passion.  Though marriage and success constantly eluded him Welles seems to attain a zen understanding of his place as an extremely gifted faker, a born liar.  The meditation allows that illusion does not necessarily make life less meaningful, only that stories lend shape and shade to experience.

The Lady From Shanghai
1947
dir. Orson Welles
87 min.

Screening at the Brattle Theatre August 22 @ 5PM
and August 23 @3:15PM and 7:30 PM