Journey Into Fear (Norman Foster, 1943)

Joseph Cotten and Orson Welles in Journey Into Fear

Cast: Joseph Cotten, Dolores Del Rio, Everett Sloane, Ruth Warrick, Orson Welles, Agnes Moorehead, Jack Durant, Eustace Wyatt, Frank Readick, Edgar Barrier, Jack Moss, Hans Conried. Screenplay: Orson Welles, Joseph Cotten, based on a novel by Eric Ambler. Cinematography: Karl Struss. Art direction: Albert S. D'Agostino, Mark-Lee Kirk. Film editing: Mark Robson. Music: Roy Webb.

While they were working on The Magnificent Ambersons, Orson Welles and Joseph Cotten used some spare time to rewrite a screenplay by Richard Collins and Ben Hecht for a property owned by RKO, Eric Ambler's spy novel Journey Into Fear. Welles would have directed, but he was still tied up on Ambersons, so he assigned the job to Norman Foster, though he still had time to play the secondary role of Col. Haki, and as producer to see to it that many of the actors he had worked with -- Cotten, Dolores Del Rio, Everett Sloane, Ruth Warrick, and Agnes Moorehead -- played key roles. The result is a film whose complicated plot never quite resolves itself into clarity, but which abounds in Wellesian moments, such as the desperate struggle on the rainswept ledge of a hotel at the film's climax. Unfortunately, Welles's battle with RKO over the editing of Ambersons resulted in his firing, and the editing of Journey Into Fear was similarly taken out of his hands.

The Lady From Shanghai (Orson Welles, 1947)

Like most of Orson Welles's Hollywood work, The Lady From Shanghai is the product of clashing wills: Welles's and the studio's -- in this case, Columbia under its infamous boss Harry Cohn. And as usual, the clash shows, sometimes in Welles's brilliance, such as the celebrated shootout in a hall of mirrors at the film's end, and sometimes in his indifference to the material: Is there any real excuse for the farcical courtroom scene that so violates any sense of consistency in the film's tone? Welles miscast himself as the protagonist, Michael O'Hara, a two-fisted Irish seaman, complete with an accent that he must have picked up in his youthful days in the Dublin theater. His soon-to-be ex-wife, Rita Hayworth, was forced upon him by Cohn, whom he angered by having her cut her hair and dye it blond. Her Elsa Bannister is the epitome of the treacherous film noir femme fatale, but it's hard to say whether the screenplay -- mostly by Welles -- or Hayworth's limited acting ability prevents the character from coming into focus. The real casting coup of the film is Everett Sloane as as Elsa's crippled husband, Arthur, and Glenn Anders as his partner, George Grisby. I use the word "partner" intentionally, because the film dodges around the Production Code in its hints that Bannister and Grisby are more than just law-firm partners, evoking the stereotypical catty and mutually destructive gay couple. Welles insisted on filming on location, which means we get some fascinating glimpses of late-1940s Acapulco and San Francisco, shot by Charles Lawton Jr. and the uncredited Rudolph Maté and Joseph Walker. In short, the movie is a mess, but sometimes a glorious mess.