Synopsis
The Lady from Shanghai (1947) is Orson Welles' classic film noir, and you can watch online on iFILM. Welles directed, wrote and stars as an Irish sailor pulled by a fatal beauty into a tangle of murder, insurance money and betrayal.
Michael O'Hara saves Rosalie Bannister from muggers one night in Central Park. She's married to a wealthy but crippled defense attorney, and she offers the drifting seaman a job aboard the family yacht. He signs on and sinks into other people's schemes. The husband's business partner asks Michael to fake his own murder for five thousand dollars, and O'Hara, dreaming of running off with Rosalie, takes a deal that nearly gets him killed. Rita Hayworth cut and bleached her famous red hair platinum blonde for the part, a look that deliberately broke from her usual Hollywood image.
The shootout in the hall-of-mirrors funhouse has been quoted in film textbooks for decades: dozens of reflections, glass shattering under gunfire, illusion collapsing in real time. If you love noir for its form and the way the camera thinks rather than just its plot, this one delivers completely. Stream The Lady from Shanghai (1947) online on iFILM.
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