The Lady from Shanghai is a 1947 film noir directed by Orson Welles and starring Welles, his estranged wife Rita Hayworth and Everett Sloane. It is based on the novel If I Die Before I Wake by Sherwood King.
Michael O'Hara (Orson Welles) meets the beautiful blonde Elsa (Rita Hayworth) as she rides a horse-drawn coach in Central Park. Shortly thereafter three hooligans waylay the coach, Michael rescues her and escorts her home. Michael reveals he is a seaman and learns Elsa and her husband, the famous disabled criminal defense attorney Arthur Bannister (Everett Sloane), are newly arrived in New York City from Shanghai. They are on their way to San Francisco via the Panama Canal. Michael, attracted to Elsa despite misgivings is persuaded to sign on as an able seaman aboard Bannister's yacht.
After setting sail, they are joined on the boat by Bannister's law partner, George Grisby (Glenn Anders), who proposes that Michael "murder" him in a plot to fake his own death and collect the insurance money for himself. He promises Michael $5,000 and explains that since he wouldn't really be dead and thus there would be no corpse, Michael couldn't be convicted of murder (reflecting corpus delicti laws at the time.) Michael agrees to this, intending to use the money to run away with Elsa, with whom he's begun a relationship. Grisby has Michael sign a confession.
On the eve of the crime, Sydney Broome, a private investigator who has been following Elsa on her husband's orders, confronts Grisby. Broome has learned of Grisby's plan and that he is actually intending to murder Bannister, frame Michael for the crime and escape suspicion by pretending to have also been murdered. Grisby shoots Broome and leaves him for dead. Unaware of what has happened, Michael proceeds with the night's arrangement and sees Grisby off on a motorboat before shooting a gun into the air to draw attention to himself. Meanwhile, a severely injured Broome goes to Elsa for help and warns her that Grisby is intending to kill her husband.
Thinking the plan is done with, Michael calls to inform Elsa but is surprised to find Broome on the other end of the line. Broome's dying words are to warn Michael that Grisby was setting him up. Michael rushes to Bannister's office in time to see Bannister is alive but that the police are removing Grisby's body from the premises. The police instantly find evidence that Michael was the killer, including his confession, and take him away.
At trial, Bannister has offered to act as Michael's attorney and feels the case is more likely to be won if he pleads justifiable homicide, due to all the evidence against his client. As the trial progresses Bannister learns of the extent of his wife's relationship with Michael and ultimately takes pleasure in his suspicion that they will lose the case. Bannister also indicates that he knows the real killer's identity. Michael is able to escape from the courtroom by feigning a suicide attempt before the verdict is to be announced. Elsa follows and she and Michael hide out in a theater in Chinatown. Elsa calls some Chinese friends to meet her. As Michael and Elsa wait and pretend to watch the show, Michael discovers that she had killed Grisby. Elsa's Chinese friends arrive and take Michael, unconscious, to an abandoned Fun House. When he wakes, he realizes that Grisby and Elsa had been planning to murder Bannister and frame him for the crime, but that Broome's involvement ruined the scheme and obliged Elsa to kill Grisby for her own protection.
The film features a surreal climactic shootout in a hall of mirrors, the Magic Mirror Maze, in which Elsa is mortally wounded and Bannister is killed. Heartbroken, Michael leaves presuming that events which have unfolded since the trial will clear him of any crimes. Wikipedia
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