为了应景——《上海小姐》台词本本

边河

The Lady from Shanghai (1948) is an imaginative, complicated, unsettling film noir who-dun-it thriller, with fascinating visuals and tilting compositions, luminous and brilliant camerawork (by Charles Lawton, Jr.), and numerous sub-plots and confounding plot twists. Although the tale of betrayal, lust, greed and murder was filmed in late 1946 and finished in early 1947, it wasn't released until late in 1948 - it failed both at the box-office and as a critical success (there were no Academy Award nominations).

The film, originally titled Take This Woman and then Black Irish, was made when major stars Orson Welles and Rita Hayworth (in her last film under contract to Columbia Pictures) were still married although estranged and drifting apart. [Their divorce decree was issued in November, 1947, thereby making the film itself and their characterizations a visualization of their own personal breakup]. Believing that Hayworth's sexy screen image (after her success in Gilda (1946)) was tarnished forever with her role in the film as a wicked and evil temptress, studio chief Harry Cohn was also incensed to find that his reigning, top box-office star's magnificent auburn hair was bobbed, waved and bleached blonde for the film.

Orson Welles served as director, producer, screenplay writer, and actor, basing his screenplay upon Sherwood King's 1938 novel If I Die Before I Wake. The film was shot on locations including Acapulco and San Francisco (such as the Sausalito waterfront and the Valhalla Bar and Cafe, Chinatown, the Steinhart Aquarium in Golden Gate Park, and Whitney's Playland amusement park at the beach), and on Columbia studios sets, and features numerous classic set-pieces including: the aquarium scene, and the funhouse and Hall of Mirrors climax. [The numerous close-ups of Rita Hayworth in the film were later added by Welles in Hollywood upon orders of the studio, to lend strength to her 'star' power.] Ultimately, the film's length was severely cut down by one hour, creating an almost incomprehensible, discontinuous, cryptic patchwork from numerous retakes and substantial edits. This was Welles' last Hollywood film until the making of Touch of Evil (1958) ten years later.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


After the film's credits play above waves of water, the film opens with narration by out-of-work, gullible, wandering Irish seaman Michael O'Hara (Orson Welles), the film's naive, soft-hearted innocent who presents his thoughts as commentary in voice-overs. The Irishman hero/vagabond, strolling in the streets of New York City, tells the audience in his first line (with a wry, brogue accent), a flashback, that he has made a stupid fool of himself:


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 camera zooms in on the seductive, mysterious, and beautiful femme fatale: short, blond-haired Elsa Bannister (Rita Hayworth) wearing a polka-dotted white dress, "a beautiful girl all by herself." She sits under the black hood of a horse-drawn carriage with cab driver (Harry Shannon) on its way to New York's Central Park. O'Hara offers her his last cigarette and fancifully calls her Rosalie. Although she doesn't smoke, she doesn't want to offend or disappoint him, so she accepts the cigarette anyway, wraps it in a handkerchief, and puts it in her purse. In voice-over, O'Hara admits that he became empty-headed and unthinking after meeting her:

That's how I found her, and from that moment on, I did not use my head very much, except to be thinking of her.

A few moments later, he discovers her discarded handkerchief (and cigarette) and her purse - thrown down. He hears her screams of help as she is being assaulted by a couple of 'unprofessional' thugs and pulled into nearby shrubbery. Although not a typical hero, he heroically saves the distressed stranger's life, and then drives her (he rides on the top of the carriage) to her car in a parking garage. On the way, he learns about her past and why she is called the 'lady from Shanghai.' Speaking partly in the third-person, she tells him about her seedy past - she is a White Russian that she was born in Chifu, on the China coast, where she probably lived a compromised, naughty life as a high-class prostitute:

Elsa: Her parents were Russian, white Russian. You never heard of the place where she comes from...Gamble? She's done it for a living.
Michael: I'll bet you a dollar I've been to the place where you were born.
Elsa: Chifu.
Michael: It's on the China coast. Chifu. It's the second wickedest city in the world.
Elsa: What's the first?
Michael: Macao. Wouldn't you say so?
Elsa: I would. I worked there...How do you rate Shanghai? I worked there too...You need more than luck in Shanghai.

He becomes more attracted to her during their brief, flirtatious conversation. When they desert the cab and he walks with her into the parking garage, he explains his distaste for cops (and lawyers), and remarks about his wandering travels: "They never put me in jail, in America. You know, the nicest jails are in Australia. The worst are in Spain...I killed a man." His revelation that he killed a man, as an anti-Fascist in the Spanish Civil War, seals his ultimate fate. His conscience still bothers him after having committed the wartime murder. With a good trial lawyer, Michael believes that a man can easily escape going to jail for murder:

Michael: There's a man killed his wife in Frisco last week. She had gone to the icebox for a bit of supper. He thought she was a burglar, he said. He shot her five times in the head.
Elsa: He had a good lawyer.
Michael: I saw his picture in the newspaper. Bainbridge or something.
Elsa: Bannister.
Michael: Yeah, Arthur Bannister. It said he's the world's greatest criminal lawyer, in fact, the world's greatest criminal.
Elsa: Some people think he is.

To his surprise, she offers the between-jobs sailor, as a form of repayment, a job as a crew member on her sailing vessel to the West Coast that leaves the next day. She entices him: "Would you like to work for me? I'd like it." When he rips up her card, she purrs seductively: "I'll make it worth your while." He hands her back the pearl-handled gun that he found in her purse during the attack, and questions why she didn't use it on her attackers:

Michael: You were smart to carry a gun, traveling alone in the park, but if you knew you had the gun in your bag, why throw away the bag?
Elsa: (innocently) Why, I meant for you to find it? I-I don't know how to shoot.
Michael: It's easy. You just pull the trigger.

As she pulls away in her expensive convertible, two other characters that have been shadowing her are briefly introduced: a Mr. Broome and Mr. Grisby. Michael is shocked that the garage attendant identifies the lady as the wife of the high-priced, celebrated San Francisco lawyer Arthur Bannister: "Gee, some guys have all the luck." In voice-over, Michael muses, mischievously:

Personally, I don't like a girlfriend to have a husband. If she'll fool her husband, I figure she'll fool me...The boob that I am, I thought I could escape her.

Elsa's crippled [physically impotent from the waist down] husband - famous, wealthy trial lawyer Arthur Bannister (Everett Sloane) with protuberant eyes, explicitly seeks out O'Hara the next day in the seaman's hiring hall. [O'Hara is briefly seen typing on a typewriter, but no further elucidation why, although there is a later reference by Bannister stating that O'Hara is writing a novel.] Sent there on a mission by his wife, his entrance is cruelly prefaced by a view of his double-set of knotted canes that serve as warped extensions of his inoperative legs. He comes upon sailors drinking beer, playing with a monkey, and generally milling about. After inquiring, he is told that Michael O'Hara's nickname is "Black Irish after what he did to them Finks back in '39," and he has a violent temper when angered ("he knows how to hurt a man when he gets mad"). [Later, Michael violently beats up guards in a judge's chambers to prove the point.] The famed lawyer Bannister ("he'll get you out of anything") offers to hire the unemployed, "able-bodied" sailor as a deckhand on his cruise yacht bound on a pleasure cruise for the West Coast and San Francisco (via the Panama Canal and Mexico).

Bannister takes Michael and two other sweaty, robust sailors to the nearest bar for a few drinks: a dim-witted sailor named Goldie (Gus Schilling), who fills the jukebox with coins to hear "number four," and an old war buddy of O'Hara's named Jake (Lou Merrill). The lawyer praises Michael for being heroic and saving his wife's life: "Mike's quite a hero - quite a tough guy." Jake knowingly states that there is really "no such thing" as a pure "tough guy" without "an edge":

What's a tough guy?...A guy with an edge...A gun or a knife, a nightstick, or a razor, somethin' the other guy ain't got. Yeah, a little extra reach on a punch, a set of brass knuckles, a stripe on the sleeve, a badge that says cop on it, a rock in your hand, or a bankroll in your pocket. That's an edge, brother. Without an edge, there ain't no tough guy.

[The implication is that Bannister's wealth ("bankroll in (his) pocket") provides him with most of his edge, something that Michael will soon find out.] Bannister becomes soused in the bar and Michael, in voice-over, rationalizes taking the sailing job and becoming embroiled with the sinister, wealthy, "tough-guy" Bannisters:

Naturally, someone had to take Mr. Bannister home. I told myself I couldn't leave a helpless man lying unconscious in a saloon. Well, it was me that was unconscious. And he was exactly as helpless as a sleeping rattlesnake.

Michael's arrival at the yacht is introduced by the yapping of Elsa's pet dachshund, and a view of a glum-faced Elsa dressed as a calendar-girl - she wears a yachtman's suit and cap with white shorts. The drunken Bannister is aided onto the yacht by some of the crew, as Elsa looks deeply into Michael's eyes:

Elsa: I wasn't sure you'd come.
Michael: I'm not staying.
Elsa (with a pained look): (begging) You've got to stay.

On second thought, after being asked by the Bannister's servant-maid Bessie (Evelyn Ellis) to remain and help the vulnerable "child" or damsel in distress ("She needs you bad, you stay"), Michael agrees to work on board and accepts a job along with Goldie. [The Bannister's yacht, named Circe in the film, was a boat named Zaca that was owned by skipper Errol Flynn - the famed actor appears in the background of a scene outside a Mexican cantina.]

During the sailing voyage, Michael sees himself as a self-deceiving "prize fathead" that is "chasing a married woman but that's not the way I want you to look at it." After some weeks in the West Indies, when Elsa begins flirting with Michael - he is "gettin' into more trouble." Her reflection is viewed in the single lens of a telescope as she swan-dives from a rock cliff into the ocean. The lecherous, weird and sweaty George Grisby (Glenn Anders), Bannister's business partner who has just joined the group (and is usually photographed in repulsive or distorted giant closeups to reflect the irrational way he views things), leers lasciviously and voyeuristically at her from an off-shore motorboat before boarding the Circe. As Elsa perches and poses on the rock cliffs within view and suns herself (in an incredible depth-of-field shot), becoming a siren herself, the creepy Grisby morbidly inquires about O'Hara's background. Grinning, Grisby asks about his killing of a Franco spy in Spain in 1939, and then makes a bizarre proposal to the Black Irishman regarding murder:

Mr. Bannister tells me you once killed a man. You are Michael, aren't you?...I'm very interested in murders. Forgive me if I seem inquisitive, but where'd it happen?...How'd you do it? No, let me guess. You did it with your hands, didn't you? Does it ever bother you when you think about it? What did he do to you?...You just killed him for the fun of it, eh?...Then it wasn't murder, I suppose. Tell me, would you do it again? Would you mind killing another man?...Would you kill me if I gave you the chance? I may give you the chance.

Their conversation is interrupted by Elsa's calling for Michael. Grisby remarks suggestively as he looks at Elsa diving into the water and swimming towards them: "I wish she'd asked me to go swimming. She'll ask you, you wait and see." With teasing sexual lines and other innuendoes, the physically-attractive, black swim-suited Elsa baits Michael and plays games with him - with a smoky voice. Hinting that she loathes her asexual husband and is sexually neglected by him, she comes onto the perplexed sailor, and then helplessly pleads for his protection:

Elsa: Will you help me? Give me a cigarette? I'm learning to smoke now. Ever since that night in the park, I've been getting the habit.
Michael: Do all rich women play games like this?
Elsa: (she draws near to kiss him) Call me Rosalie. (He slaps her. She sticks the cigarette between her trembling lips and lights it. She draws a puff.) I didn't think you would do that.
Michael: I didn't either.
Elsa: You're scared, aren't you? You're scared. I'm scared too.
Michael: You think you're needing me to help you. You're not that kind. If you need anything, you help yourself.
Elsa: I'm not what you think I am. I just try to be like that.
Michael: Keep on trying. You might make it.
Elsa: Oh, Michael, what are we scared of?

When they fall into each other's embracing arms and kiss passionately, they are witnessed by Grisby who calls out to them as he speeds off in his boat: "So long, kiddies!...Bye, bye."

Elsa: Now he knows about us.
Michael: I wish I did.

On board the yacht one evening, Elsa, in a frigid pose (in an overhead view), lies flat on her back on a cushion spread out on the deck. The wealthy Bannister and Michael talk about the latter's desire to quit his job and his disinterest in making money. Bannister argues, conversely, that money for countless operations has saved him from a lifetime of crippling paralysis:

Bannister: Are you independently wealthy?
O'Hara: I'm independent.
Bannister: Of money. Before you start that novel Elsa says you're going to write, you'd better learn something. You've been traveling around the world too much to find out anything about it....
O'Hara: I've always found it very sanitary to be broke.
Bannister: ...Money cannot bring you health and happiness, etc. Is that it? Without money, I'd be flat on my back in the ward of a county hospital...Each man has his own idea of happiness, of course, but money is what all of us have in common...You call yourself independent. Come around and see me five years from now.

As Michael goes below deck and finds a restless group of servants there, Elsa's haunting singing of a torch song Please Don't Kiss Me ("lease don't love me, but if you love me, then don't take your lips or your arms or your love away") follows after him to mesmerize him. [The song was an effort to reprise Hayworth's sultry singing of Put the Blame on Mame in Gilda (1946)]. The hallucinatory nature of the film is confirmed by O'Hara - he asks himself whether he is insane or whether the other characters are crazy:

Talk of money and murder. I must be insane, or else all these people are lunatics.

On another sunny day, both Michael and Elsa (wearing her black two-piece swimsuit and yachtman's cap) listen on the radio to an awful hair-oil commercial with a Latin American beat:

(sung) Glosso-Lusto in your hair
Keeps it Glosso-Lusto bright,
G-L-O-double S-O
L-U-S-T-O is right!
Glosso-Lusto. (A wolf whistle)
(spoken) So, remember ladies, use Glosso-Lusto, pleases your hair, pleases the man you love.

The song prompts Michael to ask Elsa about her feelings about love, as he steers the yacht through the tropical ocean. She quotes from The Wisdom of China, by Lin Yutang, as the wind blows through her blonde hair:

Michael: Love. Do you believe in love at all, Mrs. Bannister?
Elsa: (She takes the wheel.)...I was taught to think about love in Chinese.
Michael: The way a Frenchman thinks about laughter in French?
Elsa: The Chinese say, it is difficult for love to last long. Therefore, one who loves passionately is cured of love, in the end.
Michael: Sure, that's a hard way of thinking.
Elsa: There's more to the proverb: Human nature is eternal. Therefore, one who follows his nature keeps his original nature, in the end.

Elsa's husband appears on the left side of the frame, again obnoxiously calling her: "Lover!" as dark shadows fall over the pair. Michael remarks: "I never make up my mind about anything at all until it's over and done with."

To please his wife, in a very vulgar way, Bannister organizes a picnic-party that requires the entire crew to march into a dangerous jungle along the Mexican coast filled with squawking parrots. According to Michael, as they take canoes through slithering snake and alligator-infested waters, "a lot of trouble and a great deal of money went into it, but it was no more a picnic than Bannister was a man." An important plot point is abruptly inserted into the picnic scene - Bannister tells Sidney Broome (Ted de Corsia), the yacht's steward, that he already is painfully aware that he will be the victim of a murder plot ("There's a plot against my life, correct? I'm gonna be murdered").

As the lavish preparations are made, Elsa calls Michael aside and anxiously tells him about Broome's character - he is really a private divorce detective hired by Bannister to tail and spy on her for evidence of unfaithfulness. If she would ever divorce her husband, she would be left with nothing:

Elsa: He isn't really a steward...He's a detective, Michael. My husband hires him to watch me. He wants to fix it so I'll never be able to divorce him...I haven't a cent, Michael. He wants to cut me off without a cent.
Michael: Does that matter so much, I shouldn't think it would?
Elsa: Oh, I told you, sweet, you don't know anything about the world.
Michael: Well lately, I've been rounding out my education.

That evening, torches lead a procession to the inlet where the picnic is to be held. Swinging in netted hammocks, Grisby (mixing "Grisby specials" from a tall cocktail shaker), Elsa, and Arthur drunkenly toss out verbal wisecracks, and bait each other about how Michael serves as Elsa's "big strong bodyguard...with an Irish brogue." Bannister argues disagreeably with his partner about his degree of jealousy. Hateful of her own life, Elsa agonizes about being in their distasteful and destructive company:

Bannister: You know, you're a stupid fool, George.You ought to realize I don't mind it a bit if Michael's in love with my wife. He's young, she's young. He's strong, she's beautiful. (Elsa rises.) Sit down, darling, where's your sense of humor?
Elsa: I don't have to listen to you talk like that.
Bannister: Yes, you do, lover...Come to think of it, why doesn't Michael want to work for us?
Elsa: (sighing) Why should he? Why should anyone want to live around us?
Bannister: Where's his sense of adventure?

Under a full moon, Michael is summoned to join the trio to provide more fuel for their bickering, although Bannister condescendingly feels he isn't in their "social register." Recognizing how hateful they are becoming in their game-playing machinations to outwit and ruin each other, Michael makes a bitter comment about their methods of amusement. Bannister seizes the opportunity to speak about how he trapped Elsa into becoming his wife (probably through blackmailing her about her shady, miserable past in China, or enticing her with his money):

Michael: Is this what you folks do for amusement in the evenings, sit around toasting marshmallows and calling each other names? Sure, if you're so anxious for me to join the game, I'd be glad to. I can think of a few names I'd like to be calling you myself.
Bannister: ...You should know what George knows about me, for instance, if you really want to call me names. And Michael, if you think George's story is interesting, you ought to hear the one about how Elsa got to be my wife.
Elsa: Do you want me to tell him what you've got on me, Arthur?

In their cruel company, Michael is reminded of an experience he had while fishing off Brazil and likens them to a pack of blood-seeking 'sharks.' He recalls that the mad predators had a feeding frenzy upon themselves until none survived:

Do you know, once off the hump of Brazil, I saw the ocean so darkened with blood it was black, and the sun fadin' away over the lip of the sky. We put in at Fortaleza. A few of us had lines out for a bit of idle fishin'. It was me had the first strike. A shark it was, and then there was another, and another shark again, till all about the sea was made of sharks, and more sharks still, and the water tall. My shark had torn himself from the hook, and the scent, or maybe the stain it was, and him bleedin' his life away, drove the rest of 'em mad. Then the beasts took to eatin' each other; in their frenzy, they ate at themselves. You could feel the lust and murder like a wind stingin' your eyes. And you could smell the death reeking up out of the sea. I never saw anything worse until this little picnic tonight. And you know, there wasn't one of them sharks in the whole crazy pack that survived.

As Michael parts, Bannister throws out another insult toward Grisby: "That's the first time anyone ever thought enough of you to call you a shark. If you were a good lawyer, you'd be flattered."

When docked in the heat-soaked port of Acapulco, Grisby and Michael pass peasants in an impoverished section of town before climbing to beautiful vistas above the harbor's beach, as Michael describes their exotic, but decadent locale filled with "hunger and guilt":

There's a fair face to the land, surely, but you can't hide the hunger and guilt. It's a bright, guilty world.

They pass a gigolo who tells his female tourist companion: "Darling, of course you pay me!" before arriving at the top of a parapet, filmed with high-angle overhead, dizzying views of the cliffs, rocks and void of water below them. In a bizarre and complex plan of murder and fraud that is about to unfold, the perspiring Grisby argues, convincingly (in his quirky, sing-song voice), that he wishes to disappear from the world and escape before Armageddon - a nuclear holocaust that will end the world: "First, the big cities, then maybe even this! It's just got to come!"

[It is no coincidence that Grisby's fear of nuclear annihilation was also gripping the nation at the time of the film's making. His desire, later stated, to escape to "the smallest island in the South Seas" is paradoxical, given that US atomic bomb testing was being conducted in just such a remote location - the testing ground at Bikini Atoll. AND Rita Hayworth's screen persona as Gilda, another menacing screen siren, was already identified with the Bomb - her provocative image was painted on the casing of the first Pacific bomb dropped.]

O'Hara is asked by Grisby to accept his "straightforward business proposition" that pays $5,000:

Grisby: That's what I need you for, Michael. To see to it that I'm not around. How'd you like $5,000?...I'll fill in the details later...It's yours. All you have to do is kill somebody.
Michael (curiously): Who, Mr. Grisby? I'm particular who I murder...You know, I wouldn't like to kill just anybody. Is it someone I know?
Grisby: Oh, yeah, but you'll never guess...It's me...I want you to kill me!

Grisby departs with a glib and strange goodbye: "So long, fella!' as violins shriek loudly to end the scene.

The next night, after leaving dinner with her husband, Elsa (in a white dress) runs down a hillside in the dark to locate an uneasy Michael on a moonlit Acapulco street, where he tells her about Grisby's weird proposal of suicide and his fear of the world exploding. She admits to having thought of suicide for herself to end her own personal pain ("I've looked at those pills [her husband's pain killers] so many times...and wondered if enough of them would kill my pain"), and asks Michael if he ever considered killing himself. She is already aware of Grisby's insane, suicidal impulses: "He's not sane, neither is Arthur."

Their conversation is interrupted by the forebidding appearance of Broome in the shadows. Spying on them, he threatens the couple's romantic intentions: "I'd hate to have to report you to the lady's husband." Michael angrily slugs him and knocks him down, and then pursues Elsa through impoverished streets when she flees in fear. When he catches up to her, he dances with her and promises to protectively care for her and provide a safe haven away from the evil of her surroundings. Teary-eyed, she contends that they are already in one of the world's "far places" and they still haven't escaped evil and suffering. Fatalistic about the world and already devoid of life to the core, she instructs her "foolish knight errant" to do what she has calculatedly done to survive: compromise, accept ("make terms") and "get along with" life's badness:

Michael: Sure, I'm gonna take you where there aren't any spies.
Elsa: Michael, where?
Michael: A long way off. Somewhere in the far places.
Elsa: Far places? We're in one of them now. Anyway, it doesn't work. I tried it. Everything's bad, Michael, everything. You can't escape it or fight it. You've got to get along with it. Deal with it, make terms. You're such a foolish knight errant, Michael. You're big and strong, but you just don't know how to take care of yourself. So how could you take care of me?

The scene changes as the cruise ends in the fall with the yacht's arrival in San Francisco, according to Michael's voice-over. He is a fish that has already been thoroughly "hooked" (literally swallowed and eaten alive) by Elsa's pleas for aid:

It was early October when we made San Francisco, and dropped anchor across the bay from the city in Sausalito. It had been a most interesting cruise, all very rich and rare and strange. But I had had no stomach for it. To begin with, living on a hook takes away your appetite. You have no taste for any pleasure at all but the one that's burnin' in you. But even without an appetite, I had heard it's quite amazing how much a fool like me can swallow.

He has convinced himself that Elsa has redemptive qualities - he can run off with her, save her from the sea of shark's blood, and take care of her (with the $5,000 bounty for killing Grisby). He tells her of his fantasy - his intentions of "running off with you to a desert island to eat berries and goat's milk." But she doubts his realistic ability to support her and declines his offer: "And I'd have to take in washing to support you." Believing otherwise, he asks: "Would you have to take in washing on five thousand dollars?" [She smiles, knowing that he has accepted, in his mind, Grisby's diabolical murder scheme.]

Over beers at the Sausalito waterfront bar, Grisby clarifies more of his absurd plan, stating that "the firm of Bannister and Grisby is insured against the death of either partner. That means if one of us dies, the other stands to get a lot of money." He also mentions that he is unhappily married, and wishes to leave the San Francisco firm permanently. Grisby hints, with a sublimated wish of his own, that the reward money will give O'Hara the opportunity to steal Elsa away from Bannister: "That ought to take a girl and sailor on quite a nice little trip." They make arrangements to meet later that evening (at Grisby's office) for Michael to sign some related papers ("a confession of murder"). He toasts: "Here's to crime." After Michael is driven into the city, Elsa's Chinese servant Li (Wong Chong) tells him that Elsa will meet him in the city's aquarium at nine o'clock the next morning.

In Grisby's office, Michael listens to part of the typed, confessional statement he must sign, admitting that he killed Grisby on the evening of August 9th [this is entirely inconsistent with the docking in early October in SF], the next night: " I shot and killed Mr. George Grisby, placing a dead corpse in the Sausalito bay..." [This part of the confessional should automatically have ruled out Michael's later guilt. Grisby's body isn't discovered in Sausalito bay, but outside his law office.] Grisby rules out suicide (it's "against the law"), and instead wants Michael to help him fake his murder. As he counts out half the pay-off cash while listening to tropical music, Grisby describes how he will disappear. And he convinces gullible O'Hara, with double-talk and insane logic, that a murderer can't be convicted, in California, if there is no corpse to be found. He implies that his wily partner, Bannister, will cleverly exonerate O'Hara:

This is going to be murder and it's going to be legal. I want to live, but I want to vanish. I want to go away and change my name and never be heard of again. But that costs money and it isn't as easy nowadays. If they're looking for you, they'll find you, unless they think you're dead. They'll find you even on the smallest island in the South Seas. That's where I'm gonna be, fella, on that smallest island...I want to live on that island in peace. That won't be possible unless the world is satisfied that I don't exist. You know, the law's a funny thing, fella. The state of California will say I'm dead, officially dead, if somebody will say they murdered me. (He chuckles.) That's what I'm paying you for...You swear you killed me, but you can't be arrested. That's the law. Look it up for yourself. There's no such thing as homicide unless they find a corpse. It just isn't murder if they don't find a body. According to the law, I'm dead IF you say you murdered me. But you're not a murderer unless I'm dead. Silly, isn't it?

The next morning, Michael secretly meets Elsa in a San Francisco aquarium. The fascinating sequence is highlighted by their silhouettes back-lit in front of lurid, writhing, shadowy creatures of the deep (monstrous squids, octopuses with long tentacles, a turtle, giant goldfish, groper fish, moray eels, a barracuda, etc.) swimming in the fish tanks behind them. The pace quickens in their conversation as he tells her ("fair Rosalie") of his love and arrangement of rescue plans so that they'll be together. After having changed her mind, she begs, with words that come back to haunt her in the film's climax, for him to elope with her so she can escape from her predatory husband: "Tell me where we'll go, Michael. Will you carry me off with you into the sunrise?...Just take me there. Take me quick. Take me." Comically, a spinsterish schoolteacher and her young students on a field trip discover the lovers kissing.

After a passionate kiss, he admits his "foolish" decision to raise money by pretending to murder Grisby. She reads his pre-signed, fake confession with the description of the crime to be committed in Sausalito:

I, Michael O'Hara, in order to live in peace with my God, do freely make the following confession...We arrived at the boat landing at approximately 10:20. Mr. Grisby said he heard a sound, something suspicious. He said he was frightened of a hold-up and asked me to get the gun out of the side pocket of the car just in case. I reached in and got the gun, but I had hardly taken hold of it when the gun went off by accident in my hand, and I saw that Mr. Grisby was all covered with blood. It took me a minute to realize that Mr. Grisby was dead, to realize that I, Michael O'Hara, had killed him.

Confusing Michael even further, Elsa warns that her husband is undeniably behind Grisby's proposal. She speculates that her devious husband wrote the confession: "It's one of those famous Bannister tricks...It's a trap of some kind...I'll swear my husband's behind this whole thing." Michael admits that he was dragged into the 'murder' scheme because he's "a fool - a deliberate, intentional fool - and that's the worst kind." As the camera dramatically captures their giant, black profiles in front of the aquarium's tanks, Elsa confirms his appellation with her hushed and breathless voice, and assents to his participation in the crime plot. She passionately calls him her "beloved fool." Their kiss blots the screen black.

At the Bannisters' house in San Rafael on the night of the fabricated 'murder,' everything falls apart when Sidney Broome (the Bannisters' butler/detective) reveals that he knows what's up. [Grisby's plan is to kill Bannister and frame Michael, but his plan goes awry when Broome reveals his knowledge of the plan.] He attempts to blackmail Grisby and buy his silence: "I wonder, am I the only one that's onto you and her?...Nobody else seems to guess you're sweet on her. That ought to be worth a little extra, but I'll throw it in for the same price...I can shut up, that's what I'm selling." Broome is shot, point-blank, and mortally wounded by the inept Grisby. He returns the gun to Michael (to use for his own 'killing'), and tells Michael his alibi for the gunshots - he claims he was "just doing a little tar-get practice."

Grisby and Michael drive to the Sausalito dock (the scene of the planned 'murder') and on the way, rear-end the back of a truck at a stop sign. The pane of their car's windshield is smashed in two places from the impact, and Grisby is bleeding from cuts. He rationalizes that the concerned truck driver will make a "good witness" who saw them just before the 'murder.' Elsa, who has heard the gunshot, finds Broome dying on the kitchen floor. Imperious above him, she listens impassionately as he tells her that he knows the plot against her husband:

There's gonna be a murder. Ain't gonna be no fake murder, not this time. Somebody's gonna be killed...Yeah, your husband. Maybe he's the one who's gonna be knocked off...Could be? You'd better get down to his office if you want to do anything about it.

Arriving in Sausalito outside the waterfront establishment, Grisby cheerfully smears the floor of the car and Michael's coat with his blood: "It's perfect. If you shot me, there would be blood, fella." They hear a piano playing in the background and see people celebrating in the dock's saloon as they orchestrate the 'murder.' As Grisby pulls away from the harbor in a speedboat, Michael takes multiple shots into the air - and then the camera tracks after him as he approaches the crowd of patrons who have assembled on the outer deck after hearing the shots. The rotund bartender (Peter Cusanelli) queries him about his smoking gun:

Bartender: Hey, what are you doing with that gun?
Michael: I was just doin' a little tar-get practice.

However, Michael suddenly figures out Grisby's scheme when he phones the Bannister house and hears the last dying words of Broome:

Get down to the office, Montgomery Street. You was framed. Grisby didn't want to disappear. He just wanted an alibi - and you're it. You're the fall guy. Grisby's gone down there to kill Bannister, now.

Michael hurriedly drives across the Golden Gate Bridge into the city, toward the San Francisco law office of Bannister - to prevent the lawyer's murder. His car is stopped by police who surround the law office - blood, a confession statement, and a fired gun are discovered on Michael's person. To his horror, Bannister is alive, but Grisby is wheeled by and laid out on a stretcher. A corpse has been found! Subsequently, Michael is arrested - incriminated by the false confession that he had signed, and framed on a fabricated murder charge of Bannister's business partner. Bannister also remarks to Elsa, who drives up, that Grisby was holding Michael's cap in his hand when he was found lying dead on the street: "Michael is going to need a good lawyer." Jealous husband Bannister acts as O'Hara's legal representative, defending him for both murders and reluctantly serving as Elsa's protector.

In voice-over, Michael admits that he was a "big boob" for getting mixed up in everything:

I began to ask myself if I wasn't out of my head entirely. The wrong man was arrested. The wrong man was shot. Grisby was dead and so was Broome. And what about Bannister? He was going to defend me in a trial for my life. And me, charged with a couple of murders I did not commit. Either me or the rest of the whole world is absolutely insane.
Elsa drives her open convertible up and down steep hills in San Francisco (on Sacramento and Mason Streets) to the Hall of Justice (at Kearny and Washington Streets). She meets her husband in the lobby outside the courtroom, close to where Michael is jailed. During a very slow-moving dolly shot toward them and as the famed lawyer is often interrupted with greetings from his corrupt law acquaintances, the Bannisters have a disagreeable and hateful dialogue about Michael's innocence and Grisby's alleged involvement and plot to fake his own death. Bannister seems determined to make sure that O'Hara is convicted. (Elsa smokes during the scene - something she learned since meeting Michael that clearly associates her with him.) Evidence doesn't help Michael's case - the gun that killed Grisby cannot be found. Although he has never lost a case, Bannister doesn't mind seeing Michael found guilty, but he doesn't want his wife to view a convicted Michael as a martyr:

Bannister: Isn't it your idea to save Michael from the gas chamber?
Elsa: Arthur Bannister's the only one who can do it...
Bannister: I was the murdered man's partner. The other victim was my servant. If I defend Michael, any jury is going to figure I have reason to believe that he's innocent.
Elsa: And you have reason to believe that Michael is innocent?
Bannister: I, uh, I hear that Galloway [the District Attorney] (Carl Frank) is going to say that Michael took George's corpse into the city in our speedboat.
Elsa: But he didn't. We can prove...
Bannister: Prove? George couldn't have taken it.
Elsa: Why not?
Bannister: Well, how could he get back?
Elsa: Back where?
Bannister: The yacht, naturally. The speedboat couldn't have driven itself. Or maybe it was George's ghost. Maybe the boat just drifted back. No, lover. Michael has got to plead excusable homicide.
Elsa: But you can prove he didn't do it with his gun. They already know it wasn't Michael's gun that killed George.
Bannister: The gun that did kill George can't be found, lover. So we can't prove that Michael didn't shoot him. And it was Michael's gun that killed Broome. No, Michael is going to need everything the 'greatest living trial lawyer' can do for him. Our good district attorney over there has worked up a beautiful case: the truck driver, the fat saloon keeper down at the docks, they'll be effective witnesses. And he will know how to handle them. And then there's this, uh, crazy confession.
Elsa: But Michael has an explanation.
Bannister: (chuckling) Explanation?
Elsa: You think it's funny.
Bannister: Funny? You mean that story about how George hired Michael to kill George.
Elsa: To pretend to kill him.
Bannister: Really? Why would George want to disappear?
Elsa: Michael said something about partnership insurance.
Bannister: What?
Elsa: Partnership insurance.
Bannister: Which he, George, wanted to collect?...And he, George, wanted everybody to think he was dead?
Elsa: Yes.
Bannister: Dead, so that he could collect the insurance?
Elsa: Yes.
Bannister: Well, if he was dead, how could he collect? No, lover, if your Irishman doesn't want to go to the gas chamber, he's got to have to trust me.
Elsa: But you. Do you trust him?
Bannister: I wouldn't trust him with my wife.
Elsa: You want to make sure he doesn't get off, don't you?
Bannister: I've never lost a case, remember? Besides, my wife might think he was a martyr. I've got to defend him. I haven't any choice. And neither have you.

Allowed to visit Michael in his jail cell alone (by her husband), Elsa speaks to him but is separated by upright black bars and a screen. O'Hara feels doomed to die, but Elsa encourages him to "trust" her husband - "because it's your only chance - because I want you to." When she advises him to admit to his murder of Broome (does she really believe this?), Michael explains that Grisby killed Broome and wanted to murder Bannister too, because "he couldn't get a divorce...so he could get away from his wife." She expresses her profound doubt about Grisby faking his own death - a close-up displays her stunned expression as she tells him: "George didn't have a wife. He wasn't married."

An unforgettable, farcical courtroom scene (a vaudevillian theatre of the absurd) makes justice seem ludicrously administered: there are frequent coughing and sneezing fits in the crowd and jury box; bouts of laughter from a disruptive audience that views the proceedings as entertainment; a fat gallery attendee sleeping; two gum-chewing observers, one of whom sticks her wad under her chair; two talkative Chinese girls gabbing in their foreign tongue about the trial (ending with "You ain't kiddin'!"); a jury member guffawing inappropriately when Bannister is identified as "a member of the bar," etc. The trial opens with Bannister loudly objecting to the befuddled presiding judge (Erskine Sanford) about the questioning of a police officer by the district attorney:

Bannister: I object! The question calls for the operation of the officer's mind!
Judge: Sustained.
District Attorney: Very well. In the interest of saving time, we will proceed. As I'm sure Officer Peters is most anxious to go home to his wife and family before returning to duty. Now then, Officer Peters, except for the blood, the clothes were dry...Yet the defendant stated in his confession that he threw the body into the bay. [The written confession about the body being thrown into the bay should discredit the entire statement.]
Bannister: Your Honor, the District Attorney isn't cross-examining, he's making speeches.
District Attorney: That simply isn't so.
Bannister: I move for a declaration of mistrial be sought on the grounds that the jury is being prejudiced.
District Attorney: These are some of the great Bannister's 'trial tactics.' In an appeal for sympathy...
Bannister: The District Attorney is beginning to get vicious.
Judge: When you two gentlemen get over your argument, tell me who won. Then I'll decide on the objection. (Laughter) Objection sustained.

Bannister completely discredits Officer Peters' entire testimony (and the D.A.'s appeal for sympathy) by stating that Officer Peters doesn't have a wife or children. The D.A. then calls attorney Bannister to the stand as a witness, to testify against his own client. The questioning about Michael's activities quickly degenerates into a shouting match about improper tactics (with strident accusations of each side about making speeches and drawing conclusions) - and an appeal for a mistrial.

Meanwhile, a concerned and modestly-elegant Elsa looks warmly at Michael. Bannister argues that he should be allowed to cross-examine himself (prefacing statements with QUESTION: and ANSWER about Michael's virtues, thereby making the trial even more humorous. Elsa is served a subpoena, called as a witness, and questioned about the murdered Sidney Broome (who was employed by her husband as a detective in divorce cases and who also served as a butler in the household and steward on the yacht). As she perches above everyone in the witness box, it is insinuated by the confrontative D.A. that a suspicious Bannister hired Broome to "watch" her - during a period of mutual infatuation with O'Hara. As the courtroom hushes and attentively leans forward for Elsa's answer ("He was very respectful...and I think he was fond of me..."), her face fills the screen as she admits to kissing and loving Michael - in public view - at the aquarium.

During jury deliberations over "the fate of Black Irish O'Hara, the notorious waterfront agitator", the ineffectual judge, reflected in a window overlooking a panoramic view of the Bay Bridge and Ferry Building), plays a solitary game of chess and hums to himself in his chambers - an apt symbol for the fateful, kangaroo court proceedings (an overhead view of the courtroom verifies the association). Just before the verdict is announced by the jury, however, O'Hara is coaxed, by Elsa's glance and non-verbal gesture, to take an overdose of Bannister's pain-killing pills that are in the foreground, after "tough"-guy (but weak defense lawyer in this case) Bannister gloats to him:

This is one case I've enjoyed losing. I'm coming to see you in the Death House, Michael, every day. Our little visits will be great fun. I'm going to ask for a stay of execution, and I really hope it will be granted. I want you to live as long as possible before you die...I've got an edge. I know you're going to the gas chamber.

After Michael downs a handful of pills, confusion and bedlam erupt in the courtroom. Guards drag him into the judge's chambers where they attempt to "keep him moving" and walk off the effects while a doctor is summoned. When he is able to overpower two guards (numerous articles of glass are shattered in the office), he escapes from the building by posing as part of another jury (from another trial about a jewel robbery) on their way to lunch. He is given a sudden fright when a guard shouts at him for listening to another jury member discussing the trial. O'Hara's main objective in his flight (across Portsmouth Square and north on Grant Avenue from Pine Street) is to try and find the gun (and the murderer) that killed Grisby. High above, Elsa watches his exit from a courtroom window.

He flees into the Chinatown district of San Francisco where he ducks inside the Sunsing (or Mandarin) Theatre during the performance of a costumed, stylized Oriental melodramatic opera. Elsa has no difficulty following, since she has a command of fluent Chinese and can ask bystanders about his passage. Backstage in the theatre, she telephones her Chinese servants and Li to come to their aid ("to arrange...someplace to take you," she soon tells Michael). She finds him in the audience, the only Westerner in attendance among other wizened spectators, and sits next to him. He admits to being "faint" from the effects of the pills. As they embrace (Judas-style) to avoid being discovered by authorities and she advises him: "don't move," the eyes of the masked or heavily made-up actors on stage dart back and forth when they see the police in the aisles.

Michael discovers the gun that killed Grisby is in Elsa's possession in her handbag. Just before he passes out, he denounces her as a blonde Circe - as he sticks the gun into her ribs:

You killed Grisby, yes. You're the killer.

He is dragged away, kidnapped by Elsa's servants, and taken to a hideout - a deserted funhouse/amusement park closed for the season. One of the greatest visual effects in cinematic history is in this final sequence of the film - the famous Crazy House/Hall of Mirrors scene. As Michael awakens after being taken there by Elsa's accomplices, he explains the full murder plan - in voice-over, as he hallucinates:
I was right. She was the killer. She killed Grisby. Now she was going to kill me. Her servant Li and his friends smuggled me out into the darkness and hid me where I'd be safe from the cops, not safe from her. One of the Chinese worked in an amusement park. It was closed for the season. An empty amusement park makes a good hide-out and she wanted me hidden. Well, I came to in the Crazy House and for a while there, I thought it was me that was crazy. After what I'd been through, anything crazy at all seemed natural. But now I was sane on one subject - her. I knew about her. She planned to kill Bannister, she and Grisby. Grisby was to do it for a share of Bannister's money. That's what Grisby thought, but of course, she meant to kill Grisby too after he'd served his purpose. Poor howling idiot, he never even did that. He went and shot Broome, and that was not part of the plan. Broome might have got to the police before he died. And if the cops traced it to Grisby, and the cops made Grisby talk, he'd spill everything and she'd be finished. So she had to shut up Grisby but quick. And I was the fall guy.

[The murderer and mastermind of the whole affair turns out to be the villainess Elsa, in true film noir fashion - she literally 'shanghai's' him. She had planned to kill her husband (with co-conspirator Grisby) for a share of the money, then kill Grisby and frame Michael for the crimes. From his vantage point, Grisby was expecting to disappear (with partnership insurance) with everyone presuming he was dead - after Michael had 'murdered' him. But when Grisby killed Broome, she knew that the plan would fail so she killed Grisby herself - off-screen - (or warned Bannister to kill Grisby?). Michael realizes that he was duped by Bannister, Elsa, and Grisby as they circled around each other like sharks - and made him their fall guy.]

Wondering if he is "crazy" or not, he walks through a hallway before a moving web of black shadows, a fragmented drawing of a wild horse, a grotesque sign reading "STAND UP OR GIVE UP", and other angular, expressionistic surroundings reflecting his mental instability. He trips a mechanism in the "Crazy House" and careens down a long, zig-zag slide or chute past a menacing, thirty-foot high dragon's mouth halfway down. After descending the labyrinth, he emerges into the Hall of Mirrors on a rotating, unstable floor. The Hall of Mirrors (the Magic Mirror Maze) is constructed with myriad mirrors - huge, distorted closeups mingle with multiple fragmented images.

Blonde, dark femme fatale Elsa, appearing in a shadowy doorway, shines her flashlight at his face. As she confesses her guilt to him, she exhorts him to understand why she duped him and was fated to frame and betray him. [Her guilty wrong-doings are never shown on-screen, only the consequences.] She vows her love for Michael without directly answering his question: "You and me, or you and Grisby?" He restates her earlier proverbial statement - challenging her to aim for "something better" than her original nature [to STAND UP rather than GIVE UP], but she declines. She believes in following her "original nature (to) the end" (i.e., satisfying her greed and pretending to love him) rather than truly loving him:

Elsa: Why don't you try and understand? George was supposed to take care of Arthur, but he lost his silly head and shot Broome. After that, I knew I couldn't trust him. He was mad. He had to be shot.
Michael: And what about me?
Elsa: We could have gone off together.
Michael: (cynically) Into the sunrise? You and me, or you and Grisby?
Elsa: I love you.
Michael: One who follows his nature keeps his original nature in the end. But haven't you heard ever of something better to follow?
Elsa: No.

A moment later, her brilliant, crippled husband arrives - walking with his gnarled canes. His image is prismatically multiplied a dozen times in a layered series of vertical panes. He confronts the deceitful couple and then vengefully threatens his rotten wife with a letter he has written to the D.A. explaining her guilt and Michael's innocence. He also threatens to shoot her ("I'm aiming at you, lover"). Surrounded by myriad, countless images (all of their illusionary, multiple identities) that they will shoot to bits, Bannister bemoans the fact that their self-canceling killings will be indistinguishable ("killing you is killing myself"):

I knew I'd find you two together. If I hadn't, Elsa, I might have gone on playing it your way. You didn't know that, but you did plan for me to follow you...I presume you think that if you murder me here, your sailor friend will get the blame and you'll be free to spend my money. Well, dear, you aren't the only one who wants me to die. Our good friend, the District Attorney, is just itching to open a letter that I left with him. The letter tells all about you, lover. So you'd be foolish to fire that gun. With these mirrors, it's difficult to tell. You are aiming at me, aren't you? I'm aiming at you, lover. Of course, killing you is killing myself. It's the same thing. But you know, I'm pretty tired of both of us.

As Bannister (Elsa's cruel pimp husband) and Elsa (a beautiful femme fatale) self-destructively draw their guns and shoot at multiple likenesses of each other, the screen erupts into a wild kaleidoscope of smashed glass, cracked and chipped pieces of mirror, and shattering bits of their false images. Their aim is confused by the contradictory mirror images that break into splinters during the wild shooting as one fake image splinters and another replaces it. Witnessing the double murders as he steps back and watches them destroy each other, Michael is horrified by the shattering of glass as the deceptive facades of their evil images are reflected and then blown away - and all that is left in the violent shoot-out is their guilt, greedy hunger, pain and misery. They finally are able to break through all their surfaces until they mortally wound each other. At its climax after the panes have been blasted away, both Bannister and Elsa are dying and face each other across a scene of shattered glass. Still in character, Bannister remarks:

You know, for a smart girl, you make a lot of mistakes. You should have let me live. You're gonna need a good lawyer.

Elsa stumbles with Michael into another room. The camera films at ground level down next to Elsa on the floor, as she agonizes over her death. While she is dying, she has one last exchange with Michael. He recalls their conversation in the streets of Acapulco about the badness of the world, and his fishing tale about blood-thirsty sharks. After she admits her own "original nature" delved into corruptness and evil and surrendered to "badness," her pleading fails to gain his sympathy, even after an appeal to his sentimentality:


Elsa: (gasping) He and George, and now me!
Michael: Like the sharks, mad with their own blood. Chewing away at their own selves.
Elsa: It's true. I made a lot of mistakes.
Michael: You said the world's bad. We can't run away from the badness. And you're right there. But you said we can't fight it. We must deal with the badness, make terms. And then the badness'll deal with you, and make its own terms, in the end, surely.
Elsa: You can fight, but what good is it? Goodbye.
Michael: You mean we can't win?
Elsa: No, we can't win. (poetically) Give my love to the sunrise.
Michael: We can't lose, either. Only if we quit.
Elsa: And you're not going to.
Michael: Not again!
Elsa: Oh Michael, I'm afraid. (He strolls away.) Michael, come back here. Michael! Please! I don't want to die! I DON'T WANT TO DIE!
Unhooked from her charming and fatal attraction, Michael abandons her to die alone. As he leaves, the revolving exit gate makes a death rattle as it rotates. He walks away from the corpses (the two dead sharks left from the blood-lust), and emerges renewed to life - released out of the dark fun house's nightmare into the dawn's air and light next to the beach. As he walks across the street to call the police and the camera slowly ascends, the "innocent" (or stupid-minded) sailor reflects and narrates to himself about how he will be proven legally innocent and exonerated by Bannister's letter. Although corrupted by being made bait (the fall-guy) between a wealthy (but greedy) bunch of tough sharks, he predicts that he may become more ambivalent, forget Elsa and put her corruptive influences behind him - if he grows old enough:


I went to call the cops, but I knew she'd be dead before they got there and I'd be free. Bannister's note to the DA (would) fix it. I'd be innocent officially, but that's a big word - innocence. Stupid's more like it. Well, everybody is somebody's fool. The only way to stay out of trouble is to grow old, so I guess I'll concentrate on that. Maybe I'll live so long that I'll forget her. Maybe I'll die trying.