littledarkcorner

[littledarkcorner]

Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Steven Spielberg (1977)

[littledarkcorner]

[littledarkcorner]

Favorite Movies: Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977; Steven Spielberg). 

[littledarkcorner]

[littledarkcorner]

[littledarkcorner]

[littledarkcorner]

[littledarkcorner]

The Lady from Shanghai (1947)

"…As Elsa and her husband Bannister attempt to kill each other they are caught in a network of infinite reflections. The actual mirrors within the fun house are layered upon the reflection of the cinematic apparatus. The purity of Welles’ crystal image lies in this diegetic reiteration of broader cinematic tendencies. The mirrors optically reflect the characters and extend from the confusion and deceit that permeates the film’s plot. The actual becomes the virtual as the character’s bodies are refracted into endless reflections but the virtual also returns to the actual as both mirror and body are destroyed."

[littledarkcorner]

Orson Welles & Rita Hayworth in ‘The Lady from Shanghai’ (1947)

[littledarkcorner]

He was tormented, possessive, insecure…a genius, crazy like a horse, and a marvelous man, completely unaware of reality.

[littledarkcorner]

[littledarkcorner]

" When I start out to make a fool of myself, there’s very little can stop me. If I’d known where it would end, I’d never let anything start, if I’d been in my right mind, that is. But once I’d seen her, once I’d seen her, I was not in my right mind for quite some time…me, with plenty of time and nothing to do but get myself in trouble. Some people can smell danger, not me." 

The Lady from Shanghai  (1948)

[littledarkcorner]

The Lady from Shanghai (1947) - Orson Welles

[littledarkcorner]

Noirvember 2013 - Day 20

The Lady from Shanghai (1947) dir. Orsen Welles

↳ 'Then the beasts took to eating each other. In their frenzy, they ate at themselves…And you know, there wasn’t one of them sharks in the whole crazy pack that survived.’

[littledarkcorner]

[littledarkcorner]

As Jacques Doniol-Valcroze has rightly observed, the average American moviegoer couldn’t forgive Welles for killing off Rita. Even worse, he let her die like a bitch on the floor of a hellish chamber while he walked out indifferently, eager to have things over and done with, without even obeying the elementary rule that the heroine should be paid the courtesy of dying in the arms of the rugged sailor. For some years, the misogyny of the American cinema has become a commonplace of intellectual criticism. Rita Hayworth was undoubtedly one of its first victims, and remains, through Welles’ genius, its most glorious martyr. - André Bazin, “Orson Welles: A Critical View”

[littledarkcorner]

Rita Hayworth, The Lady from Shanghai (Orson Welles, 1947)