Harrison's Reports (1948)

62 April 17, 1948 "The Lady from Shanghai" with Rita Hayworth and Orson Welles (Columbia, May; time, 86 min.) If ever a picture has been produced that may be classified as the work of either a genius or a lunatic, this is the one, for direction, acting, story, settings, camera work — all seem to deal with a world that is divided thinly between the ingenious and the lunatic. To an objective critic, however, the picture is unusual, and its box-office success will be, either good, or great, the results depending on publicity and exploitation; but it seems unlikely that its box-office performance will be less than good. The story is fantastic; it deals with double-crossers and with the fate of one of the principal characters — Orson Welles, who is accused of having committed a murder he had not committed, but had signed a confession that he had committed it. Some of the action is, at times, confusing, but it seems as if the confusion was purposeful. Some of the photographic effects with their lights and shadows are highly ingenious; they enhance the effect of the action, whether dramatic or melodramatic. The dialogue is, at times, indistinct, but this, too, is apparently purposeful — to create mood. The music, too, is fitting; it contributes to the creation and maintenance of the mood. The action is chiefly melodramatic, and at no time does it allow the spectator's interest to dwindle. The courtroom trial, which ends with the escape of Welles from the police, is highly exciting. And so are the scenes in a closed amusement park's "crazy house," and later in a mirror room, where a fantastic gun duel takes place with each figure multiplied by the number of mirrors and reflections: — While walking through New York's Central Park, Welles, a philosophical Irish merchant sailor, saves Rita Hayworth from three thugs. Rita, wife of Everett Sloane, a crippled but renowned criminal lawyer, urges her husband to persuade Welles to accept a job on his yacht. The yacht heads for the West Indies and, before long, a love affair develops between Welles and Rita, whom Sloane, a sinister character, constantly abused. Their meetings are reported to Sloane by Ted de Corsia, a private detective, and by Glenn Anders, Sloane's law partner. But Sloane, who had compelled Rita to marry him lest he discloses her sordid past in Shanghai, knew that she would not dare to leave him. While anchored at Acapulco, Anders offers Welles $5000 if. he will sign a confession that he had murdered him. Anders explains that he intended to disappear, so that his wife might collect his insurance, and assures Welles that he could never be convicted of the crime because no corpse could be produced. Their conversation is overheard by De Corsia, who reports it to Sloane, who in turn believes that it was a plot against his life. The cruise comes to an end in San Francisco, where Welles, needing money to take Rita away from Sloane, accepts the "phoney" murder proposal and signs the confession. He tells Rita about the deal, but she believes that it is one of her husband's tricks. Meanwhile De Corsia informs Anders that he knew of the plot and accuses him of really planning to kill Sloane and to frame Welles for the murder. Anders shoots De Corsia and hurries away to join Welles on a drive to the waterfront, where the fake murder is to be staged. En route, their car crashes into a truck and, although neither one is injured seriously, Welles is spattered with blood. The murder is staged as planned, with both Welles and Anders making their getaways before people aroused by the shooting can catch them. Welles goes to a telephone to inform Rita of the progress of the plot, while Anders, supposedly headed for the open sea in a speedboat, returns to the wharf. De Corsia, dying as a result of Anders' bullet, answers the telephone and informs Welles of his suspicions. Jumping into the bloodstained car, Welles speeds towards Sloane's office in San Francisco, arriving there to find a crowd gathered around Anders' body. The police, noticing his clothes spattered with blood, arrest him and find the fake confession in his pocket. Sloane offers to defend Welles and, although suspicious of him, Welles has no alternative but to accept the offer. At the trial, Sloane puts up a weak defense and, while the jury is out, slyly admits to Welles that he had felt pleasure in losing the case. As the jury files in, Welles, now aware that Sloane himself was the killer, grabs a bottle of sedative pills carried by Sloane and swallows them all. In the turmoil that follows, Welles manages to make his way out of the courthouse undetected. Rita follows him to Chinatown, where she sees him enter a Chinese theatre. She joins him in the audience and informs him that, through her Chinese manservant, 6he will arrange a hiding place for him until she can find the gun that killed Anders and thus establish his innocence. As she talks to him, he feels the gun in her handbag and realizes that 6he had much to gain by Anders' death, because a partnership insurance would go to Sloane and thence to her if Sloane should die for the murder of his partner. He realizes also that Anders had no wife, and had planned to murder Sloane and pin the crime on him (Welles), so that he could obtain the partnership insurance and at the same time remove the two men who stood in the way of his getting Rita for himself. But before he can make another move, Welles slips into unconsciousness because of the pills. He awakens to find himself in a grotesque room lined with mirrors, part of a closed amusement park's "crazy house" concession, where Rita's Chinese friends had taken him. Still benumbed but conscious, Welles accuses Rita of double-crossing him and of planning to kill him. Sloane makes a sudden appearance and declares that he, too, knows the details of the chicanery that involved them all. Rita and Sloane start a gun duel, shooting at the different mirrors, which had multiplied their images, until each finally wounds the other mortally. As he dies, Sloane reveals that he had given the facts to the district attorney in a letter, to be opened after his death. Rita, dying but still unreformed, curses her fate. Welles leaves them, confident that Sloane's letter would clear him. Orson Welles produced, directed, and wrote the screen play, from a novel by Sherwood King. Strictly adult fare. "Here Comes Trouble" with William Tracy and Joe Sawyer (United Artists, no release date set; time, 50 min.) Photographed in Cinecolor, this is a Hal Roach "streamlined" comedy, known as Part I of "Laff-Time," which, like Roach's recent "Comedy Carnival," is a two-picture package. Part II, which has not yet been made available for reviews, is known as "Who Killed Doc Robbin?" This part, "Here Comes Trouble," is an all-out slapstick comedy, completely nonsensical but amusing enough to get by on the lower half of a double-bill wherever audiences are not too discriminating. Revolving around the misadventures of a not-too-bright cub reporter, the inane doings take in just about every hackneyed routine that has ever been employed in countless other slapstick comedies. The different characters either chase or throw each other all over the place, and generally behave like a pack of lunatics on the loose. About the only thing missing is the pie-in-the-face routine. Children will no doubt find much in it that will make them howl: — Returning from army service, William Tracy, a former copy boy, is assigned as a police reporter by Emory Parnell, his prospective father-in-law and publisher of the Tribune. Parnell, who was conducting a campaign to stamp out vice in town, is blackmailed by Joan Woodbury, a burlesque queen, who had noted in her diary the details of an escapade he had once had with her. Worried lest his wife, Betty Compson, learn of the incident, Parnell agrees to buy Joan's diary and sends Tracy to the theatre to obtain it. Backstage, Tracy becomes involved in Joan's mysterious murder under circumstances that point the finger of suspicion on both Parnell and himself. But Tracy manages to clear himself when he stumbles across the killer — Paul Stanton, Parnell's lawyer, who was secretly in league with the gangster element, and who wanted the diary to compel Parnell to drop his vice campaign. A mad scramble ensues backstage as the police try to trap Stanton in the fly-loft of the theatre, with Tracy constantly tangling with Joe Sawyer, his former topsergeant, now a detective. In the end, however, the blundering Tracy captures Stanton and emerges a hero. Fred Guiol produced and directed it from an original screen play by George Carleton Brown and Edward E. Seabrook. The cast includes Beverly Loyd and others. Unobjectionable morally.