Our first film for today is from 1947, The Lady from Shanghai and it's, well, weird shit.
Directed by Orson Welles (who's credit as director is not on the film itself), it's about an Irish sailor named Michael O'Hara (played by Welles) who gets fucked with because rich people are bored and need something to do.
Well, that's my takeaway.
Michael O'Hara rescues beautiful blonde Elsa whose horse-drawn coach in Central Park is attacked by three hooligans.
Elsa and her husband, criminal defense attorney Arthur Bannister, have just arrived in New York City from Shanghai on their way to San Francisco via the Panama Canal.
Michael falls hard for Elsa and against any sane person's better judgement signs on as a sailor aboard Bannister's yacht.
George Grisby, Bannister's partner, is along for the boat trip and has a proposition for Michael, for Michael to "murder" George.
Why? I'm not sure. George is bored, tired of Bannister's shit, weary of hiding that he's gay. Yeah, George is SO gay but it's Hays Code gay so, you know.
OK, here's the deal: for $5,000, Michael takes the rap for George's murder (there's a signed confession and everything) but since George isn't really dead, there's no body and Michael won't do a single day in prison.
I've watched enough Law & Order to know what not having a body is a big obstacle in a murder trial but it ain't a deal breaker. But apparently the law was a bit different back in the 1940's which means this cockamamie scheme could actually work.
Except George really does get shot, there is a body and the police have a handy-dandy confession that says Irish sailor Michael O'Hara done did do the dastardly deed.
(Speaking of being Irish, Orson Welles sometimes really, really leans hard into a baroque Irish lilt. Most of the time, he inexplicably sounds like Vincent Price.)
But Arthur Bannister agrees to represent Michael in court and he's never lost a case before. Well, he might lose this one because he knows Michael and Elsa have been fucking behind his back.
By the way, who really did kill George? Was it Bannister or Elsa some other third person? Hell if I know and this point in the movie, I've lost the thread and lost the will to care or live. (OK, watching this at 1:30 AM may have been a mistake.)
Michael makes a break for it, fleeing the court and the police.
The film comes to a dramatic end with a shootout in a hall of mirrors involving a multitude of images representing the fractured illusion that any of us are ever in control of our fate, that power and life itself are fleeting and... and...
Oh, hell, I don't know. It does look cool.
In the course of the shootout, Bannister is killed and Elsa is mortally wounded.
Michael wanders off, figuring that whole murder trial thing will sort itself out.
Michael muses to himself, "Maybe I would live so long I'd forget her. Maybe I'd die trying".
And we've reached "The End" and what the hell was all that?
OK, many critics have praised The Lady from Shanghai for it's set designs and camerawork and damn it, this movie does look good.
In 2018, The Lady from Shanghai was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."
I think some of the narrative quirks of The Lady from Shanghai are attributable to this being yet another Orson Welles film where Orson lost control of a movie in post-production with the studio overriding Welles' intention and putting other people in charge of editing. It was a fate that befell Welles' The Magnificent Ambersons in 1942 and would happen again in 1958 with Touch of Evil. The grand plans of Orson Welles would be undone at the hands of others.
For all the strangeness of its characters and their dubious motivations, I guess The Lady from Shanghai is nonetheless a captivating film, both visually and as a study of the depths people will sink to in order to get what they want.
When one thinks of "film noir", thoughts usually turns to pensive black and white films made in 1940's and 1950's. The second film in today's Cinema Sunday is in color and was made in 1981.
Eyewitness involves the murder of a wealthy Vietnamese man suspected of criminal connections. While working late at night in an office building, janitor Daryll Deever (William Hurt) discovers the body.
News reporter Toni Sokolow (Sigourney Weaver) thinks Daryll knows more than he's telling. Yeah, turns out Daryll is a bit of a creepy stalkerish fan boy whose been crushing on her for years in her newscasts but hell, she's willing to play out that string to find out what he really knows.
Yeah, Daryll's more than happy to play out that string as well because he is a creepy stalkerish fan boy whose been crushing on her for years in her newscasts. Even though he doesn't know shit.
He's a janitor who found the body. And that's it.
But the real killers think Daryll does know shit and Toni is plying him for that intel so the killers also thinks she knows shit so it puts both their lives at risk.
While Toni is running up this blind alley to get non-existent information out of Daryll, the answers to her murder mystery are closer to home. Her parents are up to sketchy shit with Toni's boyfriend who may now have to kill Daryll which somehow involves a horses or something? (I really need to stop watching movies after midnight. Look, horses are in the movie for some reason.)
The "It's That Person Who Was In That Thing" Department
Playing a couple of cops are Steven Hill (district attorney Adam Schiff from Law & Order) and Morgan Freeman (Lucius Fox in the Christian Bale Batman movies among many, many other things). as Lt. Black. (There's a running "joke" that no one can remember a black man is named "Black".)
Christopher Plummer is Joseph, Toni's boyfriend. We know Plummer from The Sound of Music, Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country and Knives Out.
Eyewitness looks to evoke some of the tropes of classic film noir but it's too slight and suffers from the plot point of Daryll really not knowing anything. It might make for a good idea for a mystery based comedy but as a dramatic film noir type film, it really works against the movie.
Eyewitness does not make much an impact. I'm willing to bet real money Sigourney Weaver does not remember making it.
Next Sunday is the day before Halloween and Cinema Sunday will turn it's attention to a modern cult classic.
Elvis Vs. Mummies?
Bubba Ho-Tep is coming.
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