Sightlines · reception
How The Lady from Shanghai was received
1947 · Orson Welles · The Lady from Shanghai on Sightlines
The arc
Columbia boss Harry Cohn hated it, the studio recut it drastically, and it flopped on release in 1948 — critics were baffled and it reportedly lost money. Today it's canonized as one of the great film noirs, its hall-of-mirrors finale taught in every film school.
What’s debated
The eternal debate: is it a mutilated masterpiece butchered by the studio, or a gloriously incoherent mess that Welles's dodgy Irish brogue only makes stranger — and does the incoherence actually help it?
Its footprint
The shattered hall-of-mirrors shootout is one of cinema's most imitated images, echoed everywhere from Enter the Dragon to The Man with the Golden Gun to John Wick: Chapter 2.
Where it stands
Bedrock noir canon and essential Welles — the 'flawed masterpiece' every cinephile is expected to have an opinion on.
Did you know? Welles had Rita Hayworth — his estranged wife and Columbia's biggest star — cut off her famous red hair and bleach it platinum blonde for the role, a transformation that reportedly enraged studio head Harry Cohn.