How Orson Welles sub­vert­ed the film noir genre

No art­form or genre was ever the same after Orson Welles had tak­en it on. Be it radio plays, the­atre, doc­u­men­tary or Hol­ly­wood itself, Welles approached every project with rogu­ish dis­re­gard for con­ven­tion and a genius’ eye for rad­i­cal inno­va­tion, that would tear up and rewrite the rule­book for gen­er­a­tions to come.

Sev­en­ty years ago, he brought his unique brand to film noir, and the result was The Lady from Shang­hai, a styl­ish, rest­less work as messy as it is inspi­ra­tional­ly off­beat, and that bore many of its director’s most idio­syn­crat­ic hall­marks. Although ​‘noir’ was a gener­ic label only ret­ro­spec­tive­ly assigned to cer­tain films by crit­ics, there was still an aware­ness at the time of a cer­tain kind of crime film that were char­ac­terised by cer­tain tropes – a moral­ly com­pro­mised male lead, women as deceit­ful as they are allur­ing who can only mean trou­ble, and twisty con­vo­lut­ed plots that spi­ral fur­ther and fur­ther into a murky urban heart of darkness.

These are among the tropes that Welles cheek­i­ly plays with and sub­verts in The Lady from Shang­hai. What’s strik­ing from the very first moments is how unchar­ac­ter­is­tic the film’s voiceover is. For one thing, Welles – who, as well as direct­ing, stars as the sailor hero Michael O’Hara – adopts an uncon­vinc­ing Irish accent. Noirs often have first-per­son nar­ra­tions, but Welles’ accent lends a degree of ridicu­lous­ness to it, espe­cial­ly when com­pared with the gruffer, deep­er voic­es of lead­ing men like Humphrey Bog­a­rt, Robert Mitchum and Ster­ling Hayden.

It’s not just that the voiceover sounds odd­ly com­ic – Michael’s tone and man­ner is also unusu­al­ly droll and jovial, as he recalls his sto­ry with an air of amuse­ment at his own fol­ly. ​“When I start out to make a fool of myself,” the voiceover first reads, ​“there’s very lit­tle can stop me.” Indeed, through­out the rest of the film he con­tin­ues to inter­ject the action with cas­ti­ga­tions of his own foolishness.

Most of that fool­ish­ness involves falling for the usu­al traps set for noir heroes. After meet­ing Rita Hayworth’s femme fatale, Elsa Ban­nis­ter, he admits, ​“from that moment on, I did not use my head very much, except to be think­ing of her.” Indeed, his lust dri­ves him to unad­vis­ed­ly accom­pa­ny her and her hus­band Arthur (Everett Sloane) on a cruise to Mex­i­co. He fur­ther slides down the slip­pery slope when he agrees to go along with a crim­i­nal scheme involv­ing fak­ing the death of Arthur’s grotesque busi­ness part­ner Gris­by (Glenn Anders) – a deci­sion that irre­versibly draws him into the com­pa­ny of peo­ple he had ear­li­er dis­gust­ed­ly com­pared unfavourably to a pack of blood­thirsty can­ni­bal­is­tic sharks.

All this is pret­ty stan­dard for film noir, but what dis­tin­guish­es The Lady from Shang­hai is its faint iron­ic detach­ment, and the sub­ver­sive sense that every­thing is just a bit off. There is a con­ven­tion­al orches­tral score, but it is jux­ta­posed with per­cus­sive Latin music and Chi­nese opera. Gris­by is vil­lain­ous, but in an unhinged, grotesque, even com­ic way. There is a court­room set piece when Michael is put on tri­al hav­ing been set up by the oth­ers, but it’s a total farce. Welles sends up the idea of law­ful jus­tice by hav­ing Arthur act as both lawyer for the defence and wit­ness, at one point even cross-exam­in­ing him­self, while the jurors laugh, sneeze and bum­ble their way towards a mis­guid­ed verdict.

Even the famous­ly unfol­low­able plot is itself some­thing of a wry joke. Mim­ic­k­ing the kind of labyrinthine nar­ra­tives of noirs like The Big Sleep and Out of the Past, the sto­ry swerves between one dou­ble-cross­ing and sur­prise twist to the next, made all the more dis­ori­ent­ing by the con­stant chang­ing of loca­tion from New York, to Mex­i­co, and ulti­mate­ly to San Fran­cis­co. When the loose-ends are all tied up via an explana­to­ry voiceover from Michael near the end, Welles pokes fun at its unin­tel­li­gi­bil­i­ty by simul­ta­ne­ous­ly hav­ing his char­ac­ter stum­ble around the bizarro archi­tec­ture of a fun­house, lit­er­al­ly tum­bling down a slide the moment he reveals how he was ​‘the fall guy’.

At the bot­tom of that slide is the mir­ror maze where the film’s cel­e­brat­ed (although, sad­ly, like much the rest of the film, bru­tal­ly cut) cli­mac­tic final scene takes place. It’s an aston­ish­ing spec­ta­cle, an expres­sion­is­tic shoot-out where the shoot­ers must dis­tin­guish between their tar­get and dozens of their reflec­tions, while also func­tion­ing as a thrilling visu­al metaphor for the way the noir hero attempts to co-ordi­nate him­self in a world gone askew. A fit­ting­ly dis­com­bob­u­lat­ing end to this most dis­com­bob­u­lat­ing of films, Welles had, as ever, made a film noir like no other.