Blu ray review: The Lady from Shanghai

It seems that often Orson Welles is highly noted for Citizen Kane, but his other work is not often explored. Kino Lorber has released one of his finest, The Lady From Shanghai, on blu ray.

The Lady from Shanghai has all of the noir ingredients – forbidden love, mistaken identity, murder, false accusation, and suspense. It is so well done, one marvels that the fact that it was produced in desperation and fraught with interference from studio heads.

Welles was producing an expensive theater show based on Around The World in 80 Days. Needing money to cover the costumes, Welles contacted Harry Cohn at Columbia and ask him to wire the funds, and he would then write, direct, produce, and star in a film based on the novel If I Die Before I Wake. However, during post-production, Cohn insisted there be more closeups, especially of leading lady Rita Hayworth, and that a twenty minute funhouse sequence be whittled down. There were rewrites and reshoots abounding, but once the completed film was delivered, it was a visually brilliant quintessential noir. Some period critics were confused, but in more recent times, The Lady From Shanghai has achieved far greater respect, and was named to the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" in 2018.

Kino’s blu ray is filled with special features including a new audio commentary by film historian Imogen Sara Smith, a new audio commentary by novelist and critic Tim Lucas, audio commentary by filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich, a 2000 interview with Bogdanovich, and some comments by film noir historian Eddie Muller.

This highly recommended blu ray can be purchased at this link: LADY/SHANGHAI