THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI (1948) **1/2 The deservedly famous final shot in which Orson Welles ensures bad luck for about 700 years isn't even the best one. There are nominees galore but I'd go for either the silhouettes speaking in the aquarium or the chess pieces before the skyline. In any event it's all plenty more evidence that Welles was a genius in black & white. As an actor his understated brogue is probably a fair representation of an Irishman diluted by years at sea, but I don't see what keeps knocking out the guys he hits. In fact none of the characters are particularly believable (even the assholish lawyers, and that should be easy) though they all have their moments, except for maybe Rita Hayworth. Putting your wife's legs in a film has been done a million times but there's always the inclination to hide more than she wants the audience to see, or to make over-ripe efforts to force them to worship. At least the second one is done here and he doesn't compensate by doing anything other than giving her the most poetically obsolete lines that should have gone out a week or so after the advent of the spoken word. Technically beautiful but like most artistic efforts that try to be interesting at any cost, painfully dull.