22
Jan/15

ORSON WELLES 100: THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI & THE THIRD MAN

22
Jan/15
Orson Welles

Orson Welles and Rita Hayworth get caught up in romantic intrigue in THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI

THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI (Orson Welles, 1947)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
Friday, January 23, and Saturday, January 24, 2:40, 6:35, 10:30
“Orson Welles 100” continues through February 3
212-727-8110
www.filmforum.org

Film Forum’s “Orson Welles 100” festival, a wide-ranging celebration of the centennial of the iconoclastic auteur’s birth, continues with another terrific double feature on January 23-24. In 1947, Welles followed up the creepy black-and-white Holocaust thriller The Stranger with The Lady from Shanghai, a colorful, in-your-face noir about a rogue Irish sea captain and the gorgeous wife of a crippled rich man. Welles plays the shifty seaman, Michael O’Hara, with an in-and-out Irish accent; his estranged wife, Rita Hayworth, is simply breathtaking as the femme fatale, Elsa “Rosalie” Bannister; Everett Sloane is terrifically annoying as Elsa’s husband, wealthy lawyer Arthur Bannister; and Glenn Anders shows off one of the great all-time voices as Grisby, Bannister’s unsuspecting partner. Like The Stranger, the film suffers from awkward moments — Welles famously fought with studio head Harry Cohn over the editing and various stylistic touches — but even as minor Welles it’s an awful lot of fun. Columbia wanted Welles to make sure to show off Hayworth’s beauty, which had recently been on display in such hits as Gilda and Cover Girl, so he goes way overboard here, changing her hair color and zooming in far too close far too often. Based on Sherwood King’s novel If I Die Before I Wake, The Lady from Shanghai is a wicked tale of crime and corruption, lust and revenge. “Talk of money and murder,” O’Hara says at one point. “I must be insane, or else all these people are lunatics.” In another scene, Elsa says to him, “I’m not what you think I am. I just try to be like that.” The film is worth seeing for the spectacular ending alone, which takes place in a funhouse hall of mirrors.

Orson Welles makes one of the greatest entrances in film history in THE THIRD MAN

THE THIRD MAN (Carol Reed, 1949)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
Friday, January 23, and Saturday, January 24, 12:35, 4:30, 8:25
“Orson Welles 100” continues through February 3
212-727-8110
www.filmforum.org

Carol Reed’s thriller is quite simply the most entertaining film you’re ever likely to see, the best Orson Welles film not directed by the man who gave us Citizen Kane and The Magnificent Ambersons. Set in a divided post-WWII Vienna amid a thriving black market, The Third Man is heavy in atmosphere, untrustworthy characters, and sly humor, with a marvelous zither score by Anton Karas. Joseph Cotten stars as Holly Martins, an American writer of Western paperbacks who has come to Vienna to see his old friend Harry Lime (Welles), but he seems to have shown up a little late. While trying to find out what happened to Harry, Martins falls for Harry’s lover, Anna (Alida Valli); is told to get out of town by Major Calloway (Trevor Howard) and Sergeant Paine (Bernard “M” Lee); meets a stream of Harry’s more interesting, mysterious friends, including Baron Kurtz (Ernst Deutsch) and Popescu (Siegfried Breuer); and is talked into giving a lecture to a literary club by old Mr. Crabbin (Wilfrid Hyde-White). Every scene is a finely honed work of art, filled with long shadows, echoing footsteps, dripping water, and unforgettable dialogue about cuckoo clocks and other strangeness. SPOILER: The shot in which Lime is first revealed, standing in a doorway, a cat brushing by his feet, his tongue firmly in cheek as he lets go a miraculous, knowing smile, is one of the greatest single moments in the history of cinema. “Orson Welles 100” continues through February 3 with such other gems as Othello, Macbeth, Chimes at Midnight, and A Man for All Seasons as well as such rarities as It’s All True and Too Much Johnsons.