It’s a strange portrait in a career of corrupt figures, shady charlatans, and tragic fools, yet this unlikely Welles project is a wonderfully Wellesian film, a nightmare world of labyrinthine danger culminating in a dazzling hall of mirrors.

| Sep 22, 2024

The climax in a funhouse is terribly entertaining, making striking use of mirrors and distortion to frame a collection of corrupted participants.

| Original Score: 7/10 | Sep 16, 2024

Welles and Hayworth's undeniable chemistry beautifully anchors The Lady From Shanghai, making it a must-watch classic.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 5, 2024

Despite not wanting the job and then fighting some egregious studio hackery, Orson Welles' film noir classic is still visually and emotionally dazzling.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Mar 6, 2023

As was usually (always?) the case when Orson Welles was involved with a film, the off-screen stories proved to be as entertaining as the tale placed before the camera.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Feb 5, 2023

A mangled masterpiece from a filmmaker who presided over a number of mangled masterpieces.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 28, 2023

A sweaty, seriously horny movie that’s also accidentally a documentary about the last days of a Hollywood marriage.

| Nov 5, 2022

Such it is with sharks and genius.

| Original Score: 10/10 | Apr 21, 2022

...fetishizes Hayworth and then punishes her for its own obsessions.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Apr 19, 2021

Welles' Irish accent is a little silly, but he makes up for it by investing the film in a lot of hyper-local flavor, shooting on real locations and including a lot of the languages and cultures that loosely make up San Francisco.

| Dec 8, 2020

The Boy Wonder is so busy playing with the tricks of the trade he forgets the trade itself.

| Sep 4, 2019

[Welles] hurls restraint to the winds and when he is through with it, his poor little story is reduced to a dramatic pulp.

| Sep 4, 2019

The storyline is almost incidental to the disorientating inventiveness of The Lady from Shanghai.

| Jul 25, 2014

The film is as tangled and ingenious as any of Welles's conjuring tricks. The shoot-out in the hall of mirrors is the most famous sequence, but there are other moments just as memorable.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Jul 24, 2014

It has an irresistible energy.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Jul 24, 2014

The plot's pleasingly convoluted, the performances amusingly varied, the mood sinisterly sustained. But the set-pieces are the work of a genius.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 24, 2014

Time proves this to be insanely ambitious and batty in the best sense.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Jul 24, 2014

The hall-of-mirrors shootout finale is a canonic classic.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 24, 2014

A magnificent mess of switchbacks and revelations, climaxing with one of cinema's most outrageously inventive sequences.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Jul 23, 2014

Welles' dazzling direction more than makes up for any lack of viewer understanding.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 21, 2014