C (Indifferent).

There's some great dialogue, and some iconic imagery. The story just doesn't work, though. For the first part of the movie, things are communicated too poorly (especially the characters) to know why anything is happening. Then the "mystery" in the second part of the movie is predictable.

(Nov. 2023) ( )

2022 movie #132. 1947. O'Hara (Welles with an outrageous Irish accent) falls for a beautiful woman (Hayworth) who uses him as a fall guy. Ends with a famous shootout in a funhouse hall of mirrors. ( )

Orson Welles' ornate, twisting noir is a superb exercise in cinematic style. The plot has Michael O'Hara (Wells) being seduced into the ambit of the beautiful Elsa Bannister (Rita Hayworth), her crippled hot-shot lawyer husband Arthur (Everett Sloane) and his law partner, the scheming George Grisby (Glenn Anders). Grisby plans on staging his own disappearance with the help of Michael, but things go murderously wrong. The script has all the dark meanderings and tortured twists that you would expect from a film noir and the leading cast is uniformly first rate. It is Welles' stylish direction and brilliant set pieces (allied to Charles Lawton, Jr.'s magnificent photography) that set this film apart. Each individual scene is expertly composed and choreographed and they lead incrementally to a stunning German Expressionistic-heavy climactic scene in a hall of mirrors. A stunning climax to a first rate noir thriller. ( )