The Lady from Shanghai

Orson Welles was forced by Columbia Pictures to do extensive reshoots and edits to the film, most notably changing the setting from a seaport town to a yacht trip to appease the studio. Studio head Harry Cohn also demanded that the film's complex narrative be simplified. Furthermore, Welles famously had to cut Rita Hayworth's iconic long red hair and dye it platinum blonde for the role, which Cohn hated.

The climactic "Hall of Mirrors" sequence takes place in a funhouse at an amusement park in San Francisco. In this iconic scene, the villainous Elsa Bannister (Rita Hayworth) and her husband are trapped in a maze of mirrors, leading to a visually stunning shootout. Welles utilized hundreds of mirrors to create disorienting reflections of the characters.

The 1947 film stars Orson Welles himself as the protagonist, an Irish sailor named Michael O'Hara. He stars alongside his real-life wife at the time, Rita Hayworth, who plays the femme fatale Elsa Bannister. Everett Sloane rounds out the main cast as Hayworth's crippled, scheming husband, Arthur Bannister.

The film follows Michael O'Hara, who is hired to work on a yacht owned by the wealthy but crooked defense attorney Arthur Bannister and his wife, Elsa. During a cruise, Elsa convinces Michael to help her fake her death and murder her husband's partner, leading to a complex web of deceit. Michael soon finds himself wrongfully convicted of murder in a famous courtroom sequence.