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Context Trivia / TheLadyFromShanghai

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1* CopiouslyCreditedCreator: Produced, directed, co-written by, and starring Creator/OrsonWelles.
2* CreatorCouple: Creator/OrsonWelles and Creator/RitaHayworth were married while making the film, but they were undergoing a divorce at the time it was filmed. Hayworth had in fact hoped that she could change Welles' mind on dissolving their marriage by working with him on the film, but alas, by the time it was released the divorce had been finalized.
3* DyeingForYourArt: Creator/RitaHayworth, famous for her luxuriant red hair, got a short haircut and went platinum blonde for this movie.
4* ExecutiveMeddling:
5** As was often the case with Creator/OrsonWelles' work. The original cut ran around 155 minutes (including a much-extended funhouse climax) and had a much different musical score (the HallOfMirrors segment was intended to play entirely without music). Studio execs ended up cutting almost half the runtime and commissioning a jazzy score designed to [[MickeyMousing underline the action]].
6** Welles knew that Creator/RitaHayworth was deeply unhappy with the way Hollywood treated and commodified her as a sex object, so he deliberately shot much of the film trying to {{downplay|ed Trope}} and even {{deconstruct|ed Trope}} the concept of MaleGaze as much as possible, by rarely having her in close-up. Neither the editor, Viola Lawrence, or Harry Cohn, the overseer on the project from Columbia Pictures, understood what Welles was try to accomplish, so the latter overruled the decision, and made Welles do reshoots, which included a lot of close-ups of Hayworth.
7* OneForTheMoneyOneForTheArt: Creator/OrsonWelles made the film to finance a stage version of ''Literature/AroundTheWorldInEightyDays''.
8* RealitySubtext: Creator/OrsonWelles very deliberately made sure that the film was laden with subtext about him and Hayworth's relationship, and the unfair way Creator/RitaHayworth was treated by Hollywood, and especially Harry Cohn, the very controlling producer responsible for managing her contract.
9* WhatCouldHaveBeen: Creator/IdaLupino was interested in playing Elsa Bannister.
10* WritingByTheSeatOfYourPants: Creator/OrsonWelles originally pitched the film as an adaptation of ''Theatre/{{Carmen}}''. When it became clear that he would have to work with Creator/RitaHayworth, the woman he was in the middle of divorce proceedings with, he changed his mind and instead wrote up a script based on the novel ''If I Die Before I Wake'', which he gradually filled with RealitySubtext about him and Hayworth's relationship and how Hollywood and Harry Cohn in particular treated her.

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