The Lady from Shanghai

Oh, Michael O'Hara, you should've never taken that job. Your first instincts are usually right. But, damn, that woman blinded you, didn't she?

When seaman Michael agrees to join a rather bizarre boat trip, his fate is pretty much sealed. He starts working for a Mr. Bannister, a lawyer walking in a weird way with the help of two canes. This the day after he meets and saves (or did he?) Mrs. Bannister. The married couple couldn't be more different in the looks department, she gorgeous, he scrawny. Later Mr. Bannister's business partner, one George Grisby, joins the trip.

Everyone of the three have their own agenda, every one of those agenda's includes killing someone and also involves poor Michael O'Hara. George hires him to kill Bannister. Mrs. Bannister apparently wanted George to kill her husband, but in the end it is George that turns up dead with O'Hara framed for the murder. Or, rather, he sort of framed himself by writing out a confession to the murder he agreed to pretend to have committed. Yes, it is all a bit convoluted.

Lucky (or maybe not) for O'Hara, Bannister agrees to defend him in court. The procedures take a turn for the ridiculous when Bannister himself is called to the witness stand and - after being cross-examined by the prosecutor - cross-examines himself, much to the amusement of judge and jury.

In the end, O'Hara runs before a verdict can be announced. Mrs. Bannister runs after him and they end up in a fun house. Before long, Mr. Bannister joins them there and the final showdown, when the truth of what actually happened comes out, takes place in a hall of mirrors.

Twists! Turns! Orson Welles! Rita Hayworth!

7/10

Voyage of the Damned

I have been giving you the impression that all I watch are crappy horror films, haven't I?

Well, I don't. I give you Voyage of the Damned.

This is a wonderfully made, very dense two-and-a-half drama starring, well, everyone. You have Faye Dunaway, Oskar Werner, Malcolm McDowell, Max von Sydow, Maria Schell, Ben Gazzara, James Mason, and - in a minor role - Orson Fucking Welles.

The story is based on an actual (very lavish) journey of the SS St. Louis that carried more than 900 Jewish passengers to Cuba, visas and all, where they were hoping to escape the terror of the Nazis and WW II. When arriving at Havana, they were suddenly refused entry - seemingly on the president's whim. After hovering a few hundred feet off shore, the ship was instructed to leave and the passengers were subsequently also refused entry to the US and started to return towards Germany.

During what appeared to be a happy ending, a handful of other European countries agreed to take the refugees in. The sad truth of the individual stories were given in one of the classic "what happened to ---- after the film ended" we learned of a few survival stories. Ultimately, about 600 of them didn't make it through WW II.

Sad, so sad.

8/10