"Lady of the Shanghai" now looks somewhat naive, corny, almost without characteristic of wells of formal methods (with the exception of the Baroque final), if not a touch of irony, commenting on the action of the narrator. Sometimes discreet frivolous tone in the story of love and betrayal turns her on a fairy tale.
The Director focuses his film on the figure of the mysterious stranger in performed by Rita Hayworth, which for the expense of close-UPS that turn her face the landscape takes on an archetypal scale. Wells seeks to deconstruct the image of Hollywood stars as such, embodied men's dreams, presenting them as alluring, but a dangerous figure, ready at any moment to betray and take advantage of the credulity of the fan.
The Director himself being in love with Hayworth husband builds many scenes not otherwise the admiration of her beauty and grace, resulting in the rest of the episodes seem minor and worth the price of admission, though comically looks spectacular scene in court, especially schizophrenic questioning by the lawyer himself.
The narrative develops in a balanced rhythm failures stops, the installation is invisible, maximally adjusted by Hollywood standards, and the camera work. The film seems unusual for wells, devoid of technical sophistication and creative inspiration of others it works. Of course, it frankly, the average "Stranger", but not stun the viewer to the stylistic richness of "Otello" or"Falstaff".
Wells-actor creates an unusual for himself the image of the simpleton, deliberately dry, narrow, without tend it characters negative charm, however, its cheerful disposition that it lurks in the facial nuances. Ironic, a fabulous intonation to applied to Noir, of course, was a fresh innovation for cinema of those years, but today, the film has lost much of its appeal and even looks. not devoid of skill, but in General, the banal pattern.
However, the General negative impression albeit not fully neutralize the final, executed in the visual manner of the Baroque labyrinth: corridor of mirrors, the seriality of the images, overlaying the images for through the use of combined shooting designed to Express the Kafkaesque disorientation loss of identity is quite in the spirit wells.
To unfortunately, this episode is not long music does not is justified, but his leaves a strong impression, closing the gray and featureless narrative. For with the exception of the finale, "Lady of the Shanghai" not contain imagine any of stylistic breakthroughs, no semantic depth, remaining in the memory of the viewer as the entrance, the average movie 40 years.
