The Lady from Shanghai

A sailor takes a job on the yacht of a mysterious woman and her crippled husband. He is then offered a part in a murder scheme, and who is using whom stays unclear until the last scene. Orson Welles directed, wrote and starred. He had Rita Hayworth cut her signature long red hair and bleach it blonde. Hayworth later reported Cohn's reaction: he ruined you, he cut your hair off. Welles was trying something new with her; the studio wanted the image it owned. Columbia's Harry Cohn disliked the confusing plot and the lack of close-ups. Editor Viola Lawrence removed roughly an hour. The funhouse sequence took the worst of it: Welles designed a twenty-minute showcase of editing and production design, and Cohn cut it to under three minutes. The discarded set footage is presumed destroyed. Shooting finished on schedule and under budget in early 1947; the mandated reshoots pushed costs about a third over and fed Welles's reputation for extravagance. It did not open in America until June 1948, nearly two years after the camera stopped. Who it is for: viewers looking for film noir pushed to its formal edge. Even compressed to three minutes, the hall of mirrors entered the history of the medium. Who it is not for: anyone who needs the story to hold together. This film was released mutilated, and the gaps show.