hervorpalwords:may-shepard:221bloodnun:themanandthemachine:221bloodnun:The Lady From Shanghai (1947)
hervorpalwords:may-shepard:221bloodnun:themanandthemachine:221bloodnun:The Lady From Shanghai (1947) & Swimming With SharksThis is just one of the Orson Welles films that will have meta, where we see it influencing the Sherlock series. Links to other relevant film noir that have been done so far, are at the bottom of the post. Plot: Irish sailor Michael O'Hara (Welles) meets the beautiful blonde Elsa (Rita Hayworth) as she rides a horse-drawn coach in Central Park. Three hooligans waylay the coach. Michael rescues Elsa and escorts her home. Michael reveals he is a seaman and learns Elsa and her husband, disabled criminal defense attorney Arthur Bannister (Sloane), are newly arrived in New York City from Shanghai. They are on their way to San Francisco via the Panama Canal. Michael, attracted to Elsa despite misgivings, agrees to sign on as an able seaman aboard Bannister’s yacht.They are joined on the boat by Bannister’s partner, George Grisby (Glenn Anders), who proposes that Michael “murder” him in a plot to fake his own death. He promises Michael $5,000 and explains that since he would not really be dead and since there would be no corpse, Michael could not be convicted of murder (reflecting corpus delicti laws at the time). Michael agrees, intending to use the money to run away with Elsa. Grisby has Michael sign a confession. Welles as Michael O'Hara in The Lady from Shanghai (1947)On the eve of the crime, Sydney Broome (Ted de Corsia), a private investigator who has been following Elsa on her husband’s orders, confronts Grisby. Broome has learned of Grisby’s plan to actually murder Bannister, frame Michael, and escape by pretending to have also been murdered. Grisby shoots Broome and leaves him for dead. Unaware of what has happened, Michael proceeds with the night’s arrangement and sees Grisby off on a motorboat before shooting a gun into the air to draw attention to himself. Meanwhile, Broome, injured but alive, asks Elsa for help. He warns her that Grisby intends to kill her husband. Michael makes a phone call to Elsa, but finds Broome on the other end of the line. Broome warns Michael that Grisby was setting him up. Michael rushes to Bannister’s office in time to see Bannister is alive, but that the police are removing Grisby’s body from the premises. The police find evidence implicating Michael, including his confession, and take him away.At trial, Bannister acts as Michael’s attorney. He feels he can win the case if Michael pleads justifiable homicide. During the trial, Bannister learns of his wife’s relationship with Michael. He ultimately takes pleasure in his suspicion that they will lose the case. Bannister also indicates that he knows the real killer’s identity. Before the verdict, Michael escapes by feigning a suicide attempt. Elsa follows. Michael and she hide in a Chinatown theater. Elsa calls some Chinese friends to meet her. As Michael and Elsa wait and pretend to watch the show, Michael realizes that she killed Grisby. Elsa’s Chinese friends arrive and take Michael, unconscious, to an abandoned Fun House. When he wakes, he realizes that Grisby and Elsa had been planning to murder Bannister and frame him for the crime, but that Broome’s involvement ruined the scheme and that Elsa had to kill Grisby for her own protection.HLVThe film features a unique climactic shootout in a hall of mirrors involving a multitude of false and real mirrored images in the Magic Mirror Maze, in which Elsa is mortally wounded and Bannister is killed. Heartbroken, Michael leaves presuming that events which have unfolded since the trial will clear him of any crimes.The Six ThatchersJohn (laughing): A jellyfish! You can’t arrest a jellyfish.Sherlock: You can try.John: We did try.Be sure to read Predator and Prey: The Jellyfish of Sherlock by @devoursjohnlock The Woman in Green ( x ) Terror By Night, Trains, and Sherlock ( x )The Voice of Terror ( x ) by @finalproblemThe House of Fear ( x ) by @welovethebeekeeperBilly Wilder’s The Lost Weekend and John ( x )S4 and Casablanca Continues ( x )Film, Lit, & TV References: Sherlock (Updated) ( x )@tjlcisthenewsexy @may-shepard @monikakrasnorada @darlingtonsubstitution @sarahthecoat @shamelessmash @themanandthemachine @swimmingfeelsinajohnlockianpool @sherlockians-get-bored whoaIt occurs to me that with this plot, and the use of the many mirrors & aquarium settings, Mary killing Sherlock and Mary being killed, could be combined into one event. Mary shoots Sherlock, John comes in, and kills Mary. Sherlock dies, is revived, imagines Mary, and then an alibi is created for John. @tjlcisthenewsexy @may-shepard @monikakrasnorada @darlingtonsubstitution @sarahthecoat @themanandthemachine @swimmingfeelsinajohnlockianpool @sherlockians-get-bored @princesse-des-luciolesYes! Love The Lady from Shanghai! I absolutely adore the parallel you’re drawing here between the mirror scene and CAM’s office in hlv! Nice catch!I am not sure what to make of it but there is an extended sequence that takes place in a Chinese Theatre, where O'Hara hides after he escapes from the courthouse, complete with a performance that gets disrupted by the action. I genuinely think that scene influenced the Chinese theatre troupe plot in tbb–meaning, The Lady from Shanghai is all over BBC Sherlock as an intertext. Elsa is a curious character–an obvious Mary mirror, but, as someone trapped in a loveless marriage with someone who has coerced / blackmailed her, there’s a little bit of John mirror potential there too. (Intensified if you read anything at all into that hlv script line where Mary accuses John of only being concerned about the baby.At the very least tptb borrowed several set pieces from LfS. With its themes of infidelity, love triangles (or quadrangles, depending on how you read the relationship between Elsa’s husband and his creepy friend), and being bound in uncomfortable circumstances that one can’t quite see one’s way out of, there’s cause to hope that tptb are planning to borrow much more!The movie, ‘The Lady from Shanghai’, is based on the novel ‘If I Die Before I Wake’ by Sherwood King. Very interesting. -- source link